


Tok'ra Don't Dance

by Jb (sg1jb)



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Action, Drama, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 01:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 65,722
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sg1jb/pseuds/Jb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dirty politics, misunderstandings, and kidnapping trap a member of SG-1 in a violent, deadly situation. Where there's smoke, there's fire.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tok'ra Don't Dance

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place at some point following the episode Affinity
> 
> Previously published online, July 2006

 

 

This was undeniably one classy lady. Petite and younger than he had expected, she exuded an unassuming grace and dignified air of calm, even as death and rancid decay stared unimpressed from her eyes. Daniel mentally winced as he smiled in acknowledgement of the introduction, taking the gaunt hand offered him in his own. It was cold to the touch, and suddenly he had an almost overwhelming urge to scoop her too-thin body up into his arms in an attempt to warm her back to life with his own body heat.  
  
Such a waste. Such a huge waste; it was just one more in amongst so many huge wastes, and suddenly he realised that he'd stopped counting at some indefinable point along the way. Abruptly, he was angry. He never should have stopped counting.  
  
She was talking to him, asking him something, he realised with a faint start. His fingers jerked slightly in hers as he realised how rude he'd just been, and she frowned, starting to pull her hand away. He pushed his irritation with himself away and gently tightened his grip, holding onto her hand as he apologised for his lapse. In deference to her, not wanting her to think he'd been snubbing her, he lied a bit, waving his other hand to indicate the room at large and its occupants. "I'm terribly sorry. I'm afraid I'm quite distracted by all this... uhm, stuff."  
  
She laughed and nodded knowingly. "That's quite understandable. It does seem a lot of fancy hoopla, doesn't it." The slight slump of her shoulders and the pained look that briefly flashed across her face indicated all too well that she knew what had really distracted him, though. Nevertheless, apparently a willing, if not eager, co-conspirator in the lie, she wittily teased him, "And of course, having now finally met you, I can see how one might feel all this attention and high class pomp and circumstance in your honour to be inappropriate."  
  
Struggling to keep the appreciative laughter that wanted to escape him down to a situationally socially-acceptable chuckle, Daniel placed his hand over his heart. "Oh, ouch. I'm wounded."  
  
"Yes – and I must warn you, Dr. Jackson – by an expert marksman at that. Let that be a lesson to you for allowing your attention to wander while in enemy territory." She threaded her arm through his, and turned to her right. He went with her willingly, and then took the lead, transitioning smoothly from abscondee to absconder as he understood what she wanted. "I think perhaps Gucci and Armani can cope for themselves for a little while, no?" she commented, as he escorted her toward the huge bay window taking up almost the entire west wall of the room.  
  
He couldn't help but keep a surreptitious, fascinated eye on her as they threaded their way through insincere well-wishers and curiosity-seekers alike. She caught him at it, and in a chiding tone said, "Would you believe the answer 'forty-two'?"  
  
"That depends on what the question is," he responded, self-conscious, and then feinted, "Life, the universe, everything?"  
  
"My age?"  
  
Busted. Daniel swallowed a guilty smile, and then, because without her even being aware of doing it she demanded it of him, he told her the truth. "Forty-two. Hm. Actually, I'm sorry to say, no, that wouldn't have been my first guess."  
  
She nodded graciously, clearly not offended in the least. "Congratulations, Dr. Jackson. You've just been selected to appear on 'The Price Is Right'."  
  
"Come on down," Daniel murmured, guiding her around people and potted plants toward the window. He selected the most privately placed pair of the comfortable-looking overstuffed chairs that sat facing outward onto the gardens of the estate. The view was of a precise expanse of manicured grass and ornamental shrubs, softly lit by artfully hidden floodlights that turned the night into an entrancing twilight of wisps of coloured light.  
  
He then watched with concern as she carefully, with difficulty, settled herself into one of the chairs. She was all but swamped by the large, soft chair with its high sides and back and expansively deep seat. Upon seeing her determination to hide her discomfort as she tried to decide where to aim her legs and still appear ladylike in her formal gown, Daniel abruptly turned, and with a quick, "Please excuse me, I'll be right back," took off at a fast clip.  
  
The bartender was reluctant to part with his clearly illicit – albeit not very effectively hidden behind the wall curtain – personal dumping-ground chair, but as far as Daniel could tell it was the only reasonably moveable chair in the place, so he simply stepped up and put everything piled on it onto the floor and took the chair anyway. He wasn't surprised to find himself openly stared at by everyone he walked past, plus tailed by two black-suited secret servicemen as he made his way back to the window seating. He was only about fifteen feet away and had her in his sights, just visible beyond a large potted fern to be still uncomfortably enveloped by the bulky seat, when a heavy hand landed on his shoulder and pulled backward.  
  
A voice hissed into his ear, "Geez, I can't take you anywhere. What the hell are you doing?"  
  
"Sssst," he hissed right back, shrugging off the hand and moving forward again. "I'm on a covert mission. Don't blow my cover."  
  
Jack moved up to walk beside him, leaning over to bring his mouth closer to Daniel's ear, and whispered, "Well, don't look now, but you've already been made."  
  
Daniel smiled slightly, and then widened the smile when as he rounded the fern she saw him coming and made eye contact. An unspoken thank you replaced the surprise on her face at the sight of what he was carrying. He covered the rest of the distance quickly, hearing a faint grunt of understanding from Jack as he put the padded dining chair down next to the monstrosity that had the bad grace to have just eaten the former First Lady.  
  
Jack leaped into action, positively bounding forward to offer assistance. When he had her standing, she reached out and touched one of the stars on his dress uniform. "It's a pleasure to see you again, General O'Neill. Only, last time we met, as I recall, you were a mite bit lower on the food chain."  
  
"Yes, Ma'am. That was, what, over six months ago now? If I remember correctly myself, I think I was actually on the dinner menu rather than reading it, at that time."  
  
She replied, "Oh, don't flatter yourself, General," and this time there was no way Daniel could hold back, letting out an audible huff of amusement.  
  
As Jack helped her into the chair Daniel had stolen, he turned and tossed a glare at Daniel. "I see you've already met the esteemed but not so wise Dr. Jackson," he sniped, and then turned to indicate the two stony-faced secret servicemen who loomed behind Daniel. "And these are his new friends for life, Larry and Moe..." He gave the two men a look that unmistakably said "You can go now", but they stood firm until she herself waved them off.  
  
Jack settled himself into the second of the two large chairs, leaving the one which had tortured the former First Lady to Daniel. So, Daniel absently plopped down into it, wondering, as he watched the men walk away, what dangerously threatening thing they might have suspected he'd do with that chair, and just what – Uhm. Oh. Goodness.  
  
Daniel shifted his body, almost desperately, but to no avail. This was... the seat, it... it... okay, well, whether it be one in perfect health and fitness or one which was terminally ill and falling apart bit by bit, this gargantua of a chair just didn't seem at all suited to hold the human body. Daniel found himself inexorably aimed backward by the stuffing and slope of the seat, and that wasn't a good thing. He was six feet tall with legs that went all the way from here to there and beyond, and even so unless he wanted his lower legs to jut out off the end of the seat and his feet to dangle, he couldn't sit far enough back to lean against the seatback. But that's precisely where the chair wanted to trap him.  
  
He looked over at Jack, and with a few ungainly heaves of his body weight manoeuvred himself forward and sideways. As best he could, he copied Jack's perch on the highest part of the sloping, overstuffed seat, at last managing some sort of stable and not thoroughly embarrassing-looking position. Or, at least, he'd thought not embarrassing – as he looked up from arranging himself, he found both Jack and the former First Lady watching him with almost identical patient, amused smiles on their faces.  
  
Jack grimaced at her, nodding toward Daniel. "You'll have to excuse him. He's been all around the world and the galaxy, but he's never been exposed to good old D.C. formal event showcase-chairs." He patted the arm of the chair with anything but fondness.  
  
She laughed – a light, cultured, and completely false sound. "Yes, well, even when I had better control of my body, I couldn't cope with these chairs either."  
  
There was a long pause filled with awkwardness, until Jack leaned forward and placed his hand on her own where it rested in her lap. "I'm sorry, so sorry, Ma'am, about your illness. I don't know what to say."  
  
She nodded and looked away, her voice trembling slightly as she softly corrected Jack. "Ma'am? No. No, not anymore. I'm Mavis." She repeated her own name painfully slowly and so, so, ever so softly, almost inaudibly, under her breath again, "Mavis. I'm Mavis," and Daniel had an abrupt attack of the chills as she sat immobile, steadfastly staring out the window, the breath of her own name dying on her lips.  
  
Daniel didn't know what she was seeing, looking out there like that, but he doubted it was the garden. He bit his lower lip, not knowing quite what to say either. The silence stretched out long enough that it felt like it was approaching the point of no recovery, but he didn't want to break it with some clichéd platitude that'd only serve to inadvertently demean the horrific personal reality of this for her.  
  
It was broken for them soon enough, though, as a worried-sounding male voice suddenly came from behind where Daniel sat. "There you are. I've been looking all over for you."  
  
Daniel twisted around and definitely recognised the speaker, quickly following Jack up as Jack rose in deference. They both watched as Ray Sinclair, the former president, leaned over and gave his wife a careful hug and a kiss on the forehead. Then he suddenly pulled back from her and grinned, exclaiming, "My god, a real chair! Up. Up and out, my dear. My feet are killing me."  
  
She smiled at her husband, and for the first time since his introduction to her Daniel saw the impassive stare of death in her eyes abate momentarily. The sparkle of welcome that appeared there also showed up in her voice, as she teased right back. "Ha. Think again. If your feet are so sore, then all you need do to get off them is assume your rightful place, 'my dear'."  
  
Turning to Jack, Sinclair stuck out a hand. "General O'Neill. I haven't had a chance to congratulate you on your promotion." He glanced back at his wife, and leaned in toward Jack a bit, putting on an air of feigned confidentiality. "Best we take care of it now and let you escape while the getting is good, before she has us both down on our knees."  
  
As the two men shook hands and politely bantered, Daniel looked down at her, noting the tiredness lurking behind her good humour. A wave of compassion surged through him as he realised the bubble of pleasure she'd displayed upon the arrival of her husband was already stretched thin enough that the starkness in her eyes had all but reasserted itself. She caught him looking at her and stared at him, a faint challenge in her expression, but he didn't do her the injustice of looking away. She waited a beat longer, probably to see if her condition made him uncomfortable enough that he'd willingly – maybe even happily – desert her, and then when he didn't she nodded, seemingly more to herself than at him.  
  
He searched her face for a few seconds, trying to interpret the sharp nod and the tight-lipped expression that accompanied it, hoping she hadn't found pity in his own expression as he gazed at her. He didn't want to think that was what he felt for her, but he couldn't deny the possibility. And then, with that thought, he felt angry again. Angry over all the waste and despair and especially over his own slow but steady progress toward becoming inured to it. He looked around him at the crowd of people in their fancy dress, sipping drinks and delicately nipping at expensive hors d'oeuvres, most of them madly politicking away under the thin veneer of social niceties. An evening in his honour, like hell. He was a convenient tool here, this evening, and this was just one more waste – of his time, in this case. But really, to be honest, he had to admit to himself that, initially at least, there was a part of him that had leaped at the offer of recognition like a starving dog on a bone, even though he'd already suspected its motivation wasn't limited to commending his accomplishments. Limited to... sure. He knew better than that, now.  
  
An elbow ground into his ribs suddenly, and as he looked up in surprise he only just caught out of the corner of his eye the slight smirk that appeared on Mavis Sinclair's face. What? Jack was talking to him, he realised. Oh. Oh! Yes... Daniel stuck out his hand and pasted an apologetic smile on his face, realising that apparently he'd just left the former President standing there, waiting to consummate an introduction, for some indistinct amount of time longer than was socially acceptable. How embarrassing.  
  
Before Daniel had much of a chance to say anything at all, never mind the standard nice to meet you sir greeting, they were interrupted by a cheeky, "Throw the book at him, dear. Not only is he inattentive, but it appears Dr. Jackson is a wanton thief." The smirk blossomed briefly, but then her face softened into genuine thanks, and she reached out toward Daniel. He stepped forward and took her hand, helping her up, and delivered her to her husband.  
  
"Ah. It was you who found the chair for Mavis, then?" Sinclair grasped Daniel's hand and shook it. Sinclair's hand was damp, and there was something that seemed just a bit uneasy about his handshake. Although, Daniel knew that could have been his imagination; it was entirely possible he was just projecting. "It's been a long time, Dr. Jackson. Since the treaty signing, several years ago at least, is that right? And it isn't like we actually met one another properly then, is it? I'm pleased to see you looking so well."  
  
Daniel did the politely respectful smile, nod, spout pleasantries thing, impressed despite himself by the man's easy poise and charisma. Something else impressed him too – Sinclair was a powerful man not only in outward character, obviously used to being at centre stage, but physically he wasn't exactly unassuming either and he towered over his wife, yet there was something in his manner that made her the focus of attention rather than himself. It was clear he doted on her in a way that made everything else almost inconsequential. It was nice. And oh crap, Daniel realised he was being distractible again, wasn't he? He blinked and re-focused, noticing the amusement had reappeared on Mavis' face again, as he attended to the rest of whatever Sinclair had just been saying to him.  
  
"...the ceremony tomorrow. We should plan for afterwards, then. Early tomorrow evening."  
  
Mavis clearly decided to give him some slack, helping him out and taking the opportunity to good-naturedly jab at her husband once more in the process. "Please forgive my husband's presumptuousness, Dr. Jackson. It's pretty obvious he is looking forward to sitting down with you, helpless sycophant that he is. But he should have at least asked you if you already had plans, and how long you would be staying in town."  
  
"Oh. I'm sorry." Daniel shifted uncomfortably under the suddenly intense gaze of Sinclair. The man was looking at him as if his response would decide the fate of the Middle East crisis, or something. "I'm afraid I'm flying back home right after the ceremony tomorrow." The gaze turned into something more akin to a piercing stare. What was that about? "With, uhh," Daniel waved a hand toward Jack but then realised that wasn't the truth – Jack would be staying in Washington a few days longer. "With my friends," he amended lamely.  
  
Daniel looked away from Sinclair, who was looking decidedly serious for some reason, and found that his wife wasn't exactly neutral on the conversation either – she seemed almost flustered, for some equally as inexplicable reason. Surely his denial of the invitation couldn't be disappointing enough to warrant either reaction. The prospect of his company simply wasn't, couldn't be, all that special.  
  
They seemed to recover quickly enough, though, from whatever prompted their dismay, except that the new tightness around Mavis' eyes and mouth lingered. She looked almost annoyed, but then again maybe she was just overly tired, not feeling very well, or something. She was, well... dying, after all.  
  
"Oh, that's unfortunate, Dr. Jackson. And tonight is out of the question; my wife is worn out by all this, and I'd like to take her home now. I'd hoped we'd have more time after tomorrow's ceremony, but I guess... that is..." he paused, seemingly stirring life into a half-formed after-thought, "That is, unless you meet me for lunch tomorrow."  
  
Daniel didn't miss the surprised look that flashed across Mavis' face as the lunch invitation was tendered, but didn't have time to wonder about it. He was being pressed for an answer, and wasn't sure what to say. He heard himself stammer a bit over thanking him for the kind offer, and immediately was stymied by an effusive interruption to his attempt to politely decline.  
  
"Yes, yes. Lunch, at the club. I'd like that very much. My treat, Dr. Jackson. How does one o'clock sound? I'll send a car to the hotel for you." And then they were walking away, the Mr. and Mrs. Former-Firsts, him nodding with satisfaction over plans well made and she looking back over her shoulder at Daniel with a thoughtful and possibly somewhat mildly concerned look on her face.  
  
Damn. He'd been looking forward to tomorrow, a whole lot. He was supposed to be going out with –  
  
"Well. Lunch at The Club with Ray and Mavis. And it's on them. Aren't you the lucky one?" Jack rubbed his hands together briskly. "Order the most expensive thing on the menu, and then don't eat it, okay? Bring me the doggy-bag. I think after all these years of service I deserve at least that much."  
  
Daniel raised an eyebrow. "Right," he observed. "My leftovers. Yep, that sounds about right."  
  
Jack scowled, but couldn't hold the look and broke out into a grin. "Oh, very quick, Dr. Jackson. You got me. One point for you. But guess what? You still have to go to lunch and make nice, and I don't."  
  
Absently, as he scanned the crowd in the room, Daniel reminded Jack of just what he did have to do tomorrow. "Yeah, well, I bet my make-nice lunch is going to be infinitely more tolerable than all your make-grovel meetings." He looked out across the sea of designer gowns and Armani suits, but he couldn't see them anymore. They'd quickly enough disappeared, considering Mavis wasn't exactly able to sprint across the room. They might even be well on their way out of the building already. Daniel wasn't sure why he cared, but he did. She'd captured his attention. Apparently she hadn't returned it to him before she'd left, either, because he abruptly realised Jack was poking at his arm yet again.  
  
"Hey. You okay? What's got you spooked?"  
  
Daniel turned to Jack in surprise. "Spooked? I'm not spooked."  
  
"Yeah, sure, and my mother's not – Hey, look." He grabbed Daniel's arm and steered him away from the window, further into the room. "There's Carter and what'shisname."  
  
"Pete," Daniel supplied.  
  
"General Hammond."  
  
Daniel looked harder, but only saw Pete. "No, Jack, she's just with –"  
  
"Jack. And how are you, Doctor Jackson?" Daniel whirled around to come face-to-face with General Hammond, and felt a flush of abashed pleasure creep up his neck. He looked great, the general did, and was beaming at Daniel in a way that made it clear how pleased Hammond was to see him. Likewise, Daniel thought, as he grasped the general's forearm and beamed right back at him. "Did I startle you?" Hammond asked him, and didn't wait for a response. He clapped one big hand onto Daniel's shoulder and without his smile diminishing at all, said, "I hear you've been extremely stupid lately, son. Massively stupid. I just want you to know I'm indebted to you for that."  
  
Confused, Daniel glanced at Jack, but there was nothing to see there other than a newly adopted, carefully constructed air of detachment. That was almost as puzzling as Hammond's comment had been. Daniel's uncomplicated pleasure at seeing Hammond again faltered a bit. He opened his mouth, but then realised he didn't have a clue as to what to say – other than a dumb-sounding "uhh what?" – so he closed it again. For the stupid part, well, he could guess – no doubt it was to do with his going alone to meet with people who he knew, before he even went, were very bad people. Thus getting himself kidnapped and squeezed by them. The general's "massively stupid" was probably pretty much on the mark there. But as to why he'd say thank you...?  
  
As Daniel frowned in confusion, Hammond rocked back on his heels, smugly eyeing Jack as he reassured Daniel, "Oh, don't let it worry you, son. It's something between General O'Neill and I." Then his tone and expression changed, and he was all serious concern as he directed his full attention to Daniel. "Really, though, this latest escapade was no laughing matter. I appreciate that you were trying to help Teal'c, but what you did wasn't very smart. Not only can't the program afford to lose you, Daniel, but it'd be a personal loss I don't want to have to face again. You be more careful in the future – and that's an order."  
  
Jack nudged him. "Say thank you to the nice general, Daniel, and then promise never to do anything, ever, without explicit permission from your CO."  
  
Hammond smirked. "Is that the best you can do, Jack? You know, a good commanding officer learns to find a balance between the realities of those under his command and the needs of that command. Oh and by the way, is that a bit of thinning I see there?" Hammond tilted his head, indicating, by way of the direction of his gaze, Jack's left temple.  
  
Daniel closed his eyes briefly in understanding of why he'd been thanked for having been stupid, silently praying for strength in having to put up with this. He opened them again, both relieved and pleased, as a cheerfully delighted voice intruded. "General, Sir!"  
  
Sam's smile at Hammond was dazzling as she and Pete threaded their way past a group of middle-aged women to Daniel's left. To a number, the women all swung as one and watched Sam and Pete walk by. Daniel frowned, thinking about how many times he had been similarly assessed during the course of the evening. Not by the women much, as far as he was aware, but certainly by many of the men – Senators and Governors and House Committee and Defense Department members, and whoever else with whatever else titles, had been speculatively eyeing him since he'd been announced by President Hayes as the guest of honour and introduced to the attendees, en masse. He'd wanted to fade into the wall behind him.  
  
Sam certainly deserved to be looked at, though; she was stunning. Beautiful, even though she just wore her dress blues rather than the formal dress flaunted by the other women at the event. He realised it was unaffected happiness that made her look that way, that made her worthy of being the centre of attention in a room full of probably unhappy, patently self-involved people. Pete looked happy too, an air of friendliness and good-natured calm hanging about him even considering the stilted atmosphere. Daniel completely relaxed for the first time that evening as he looked forward to – oh. Damn. No, he wouldn't be able to go see all Sam's old haunts with her, Pete, and Teal'c tomorrow after all.  
  
Sam and Pete did hellos all around, Sam's pleasure at seeing General Hammond raising her natural glow by at least four pegs. Then she leaned against Daniel and ran her hand down the lapel of his suit jacket. "Hey there. Wow, nice suit," she teased him, and kissed him lightly on the cheek. "You look wonderful, Daniel. I'm sorry we missed each other leaving the hotel."  
  
That was all right. Daniel had felt awkward, not to mention lonely, leaving Sam and Pete to find their way to the estate on their own while he sat all by himself in the back of a chauffeured car, but it wasn't a big deal. He suspected she and Pete missing the ride wasn't so much by accident as it was by design; they probably had wanted to be alone together before the gathering. It was, though, a big deal to have had to leave Teal'c sitting alone in the hotel room; that wasn't by Teal'c's choice, and even though Teal'c didn't seem uncomfortable with the situation, Daniel wasn't at all happy about it. Teal'c wasn't welcome here tonight, and the message inherent in that fact only served to strengthen Daniel's opinion of this whole award thing.  
  
Jack looked at his watch as he suggested, "Well, now the gang's all in one spot here, what say we blow this lame shindig, go change our clothes and collect Teal'c, and hit the nearest hamburger joint?"  
  
"I thought we have to stay until after Presi..." Daniel looked around, and realised that the room had thinned out somewhat and he couldn't see the gaggle of black suits that had shadowed the President around through the crowd. "...dent... Hayes... leaves. Oh. He's already gone?" Geez. So for just how much longer than absolutely necessary had they been hanging about here, anyway?  
  
"He left around ten minutes ago." Pete pulled at the cuffs of his suit jacket. "Good thing, too, because that fake smile I was carrying around felt like it was about to permanently freeze itself into place."  
  
Sam seemed earnestly concerned as she asked, "Oh, where'd it go? You didn't throw it out, did you? It was a huge improvement." Obligingly, Pete pasted the largest most obviously fake smile Daniel had ever seen onto his face, and Sam's innocent act dissolved into a suppressed giggle. It sure was pitiful how they were putty in each other's hands, Daniel thought, and was happy for the both of them.  
  
General Hammond chuckled, then declined Jack's invitation. "You folks go on, get out of here. I have a late appointment still to attend tonight. But I will see you all tomorrow, at the award ceremony." He gave Daniel a warm, fatherly smile. "I'm looking forward to it, very much."  
  
Jack nodded and Sam beamed in agreement. Daniel felt himself blush slightly as he searched for something intelligent to say and only came up with a lame, "Thank you, Sir." But it occurred to him that what was going to happen tomorrow was going to happen no matter how he felt about it, and if it gave the people he cared about so much evident pleasure then no matter his own reservations the experience would be well worthwhile.  
  
Yeah. Sure it would. Tell another one, Daniel.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
"Well, I think they should have another look at it. Because it just isn't right." Speaking around a mouthful of the #3 mushroom-burger with double special sauce, Sam jabbed one finger into the air to punctuate her contention. Daniel watched a bit of the sauce try to escape its fate via the corner of her mouth, and suddenly felt a rush of thankfulness for two things: her hearty appetite – it was evidence of her good health – and, that he'd only ordered the caesar salad plate for his meal.  
  
Daniel looked around the table, content despite the topic of conversation. He watched Jack shake his head at Sam as she continued to express her opinion on the upcoming award presentation, and although he wished they could talk about something else – anything else – he basked in the pleasure of being here with them all, glad beyond words that all his team had made it to this point. They were all here alive and well, healthy and vibrant. So strong. Life was so fragile, and so precious. That very mix of fragility and value made for such risk, the threat of loss omnipresent. He was lucky. They were all lucky to be here.  
  
"I do not understand," Teal'c said, wiping a copious amount of sauce off his fingers onto the tablecloth.  
  
"Well," Sam energetically launched into another explanation of her basic point. "Look, let me use an example. Just recently they gave the special distinction designation to – just listen to this, are you ready for this? – a baseball player. A baseball player. Now, really, when you compare –"  
  
"No," Teal'c abruptly interrupted her. "I grasped your opinion on this matter on the first of the several times you aired it, Colonel Carter. What I do not understand," he grimaced at his sticky fingers, and at the mess on the tablecloth beside his plate, "is why any rational person might apply such a liberal enough coating of sauce as this on their meat, to the point it becomes impossible to see, feel, or taste anything but the sauce itself." As Pete let out a snuff of amusement at her expense, Sam coloured slightly, flicking her tongue out in an obvious attempt to remove from view any excess sauce on her lips.  
  
Teal'c stood, picked up the plate with his partially eaten burger on it, and started eyeing the restaurant. "I require our server. I wish to exchange this for another. It is... disgusting." Seeing her across the room waiting on another table, he headed off with plate in hand and a dangerously determined look on his face.  
  
Daniel raised an arm, ready to call him back, but Jack stopped him, smirking. "Oh, c'mon, just let him go do it his way. If it gets out of hand, the police can take care of it." Jack waved a hand toward Pete, but then grew more serious. "Really. Let him take care of it. He hasn't been out of the mountain since being forced to move back to the SGC. He needs this."  
  
Right. Feeling a resurgence of guilt over his role in the fiasco that had forced Teal'c back underground, Daniel snuck a sideways look at Jack. He didn't think he saw any censure there, not for Teal'c nor himself, but looks had been deceiving with Jack before. Many times. And as General Hammond had earlier so cheerfully pointed out, Daniel had been spectacularly stupid.  
  
"No, Daniel. Don't." Jack leaned toward him, placing both hands flat on the table in emphasis. "Just don't."  
  
Sam obviously agreed, nodding at Daniel as forcefully as Jack had spoken. Pete just sat there looking at the table, and Daniel knew that Pete didn't understand why anyone who was at least mentally competent enough to understand the concepts of shoelaces and underwear – so, Daniel, therefore – could have been so ignorant as to have done what he did. And that he would be so apparently readily forgiven for having been so inordinately stupid was something that probably completely mystified Pete. Daniel had to agree with him on that. He'd been let off far too easily.  
  
Not only that, but here he was sitting in a D.C. restaurant awaiting a presidential medal ceremony to honour him for... smartness stuff. Ostensibly for being smart, and for being there for however many years doing however many years' worth of smart stuff. For being there as the resident smart pain in the ass for five years, then not being there, then being there yet again – apparently as a pain in the ass yet again, judging from the way Jack griped constantly about how inconvenient Daniel's ethics were to the smooth functioning of Jack's Generalship.  
  
Sam's hand closed over his own. "It's done with, Daniel. It was a tough call. Let it go." She shook his hand, chastising him. "And for goodness sake, don't let your feelings over this one incident ruin this for yourself. You deserve this. You've deserved it for years. In fact –"  
  
"Ach, ach," Jack waved a finger in the air. "Yeah, yeah, we heard, Carter. It's not enough. Not equitable. Authors, baseball players, business entrepreneurs, actors –"  
  
"Actors?" Pete piped up. "You mean, like, movie stars? They get this too?"  
  
Teal'c returned to the table, a large platter with not one but two fresh burgers on it in his hands and a smug look on his face. Daniel whispered "Go, Teal'c," to him, jealously eyeing the double helping of potato salad that surrounded the burgers.  
  
Sam released his hand so she could wave her own excitedly through the air. "Yes, movie stars. Entertainers. Now, I'm not saying that these people aren't worthy of recognition, but god, really, how is it even remotely possible to justify a movie star being given a medal with special distinction, and not Daniel? I mean, come on."  
  
"Rita," Teal'c mumbled through a mouth full of hamburger, and then added, "Very good."  
  
"What?" Daniel's question was echoed three ways just a split instant after he asked. He had sworn he wasn't going to get involved in this discussion, even though it was all about him, but the question just slipped out of its own accord. Evidently his loss of control was warranted, as Jack, Sam, and Pete all looked as confused as he felt.  
  
"Earlier this very year the entertainer Rita Moreno received this Medal of Freedom," Teal'c said, stuffing potato salad into his mouth. "Yes. Very good. This meal is much improved."  
  
"With special distinction?" Sam gaped.  
  
Teal'c looked thoughtful for a moment. "No. I do not think so," he decided, and then re-attacked his platter of food. "No payment is required for this meal," he proudly added.  
  
"Then why did you mention her?" Sam looked peeved.  
  
At the very same time as Sam spoke, Jack said, "It's free? Way to go, Teal'c." Ignoring her impatient look, he rubbed his hands together in anticipation and reached for the dessert placard that was on the table. "I'm having two desserts, then."  
  
"My meal is free, O'Neill. For your..." Teal'c faltered, grimacing, and pointed at the only thing remaining of Jack's dinner, the globs of sauce congealing on his plate. "For your... food... you must pay the regular fee."  
  
Jack recovered well. "Dinner's on Teal'c," he announced loudly, surveying the dessert offerings.  
  
Sam repeated her question a bit more insistently in the background. Not wanting to hear the answer and the inevitable continuation of the discussion over what merit his supposedly worthy life accomplishments held in comparison to those of others, Daniel tried hard not to pay attention, instead wondering if he might get away with trying to scoop some of Teal'c's potato salad if he moved fast enough. He decided that would be rude, though, and settled for wistfully eyeing the plateful of chunky goodness as Teal'c looked up from his meal to answer Sam.  
  
"I like Rita Moreno." Teal'c slid his plate closer to Daniel, and passed him a fork.  
  
Sam huffed at Teal'c's answer, saying, "Well, that's nice, but it's off-topic," as Jack aimed his own fork at Teal'c's plate.  
  
Teal'c summarily plucked the fork out of Jack's hand. "Daniel Jackson may have some. You may not."  
  
"Hey. Why him and not me?"  
  
"He has asked nicely, whereas you, O'Neill, sought to take advantage."  
  
"I didn't know you liked Rita Moreno, Teal'c. That's very interesting." Daniel found himself inexplicably prattling nonsense overtop of Jack's protest that he hadn't heard Daniel ask for anything at all, nicely or otherwise. Shutting up and diverting his attention to Teal'c's plate, he ate a forkful of the potato salad and immediately discovered it wasn't as tasty as it looked. Too much mustard, maybe. Or not enough egg. Jack was watching him eat it, noticeably sulking, so he took another forkful and with a raised eyebrow to Teal'c, seeking permission, waggled it slightly toward Jack. Teal'c sighed deeply, and Daniel reached across the table and dumped the potato salad onto Jack's plate.  
  
In the few moments that ensued where Teal'c and Jack bickered over whether or not Jack deserved more of the potato salad, Daniel noticed that Pete had a hand on Sam's arm and was whispering into her ear. She looked annoyed, and her return whisper, "No. I won't just drop it. You don't understand," was inadvertently a tad bit too loud for complete privacy seeing as Daniel was actually paying far closer attention to them than she knew and than he should have been.  
  
Daniel closed his eyes and leaned against the back of his seat, his shoulders sagging. He suspected Pete understood the bottom line – that Daniel simply didn't want to belabour this; he just wanted it to be done with – far better than Sam did. But, sadly, he knew he wasn't going to escape this conversation. Either they had it here now, as Sam seemed to be pushing for, or he'd be equally forced into having it in some form or another in private later, probably at least twice if not three times: once each individually with Jack and Sam, and then possibly with Teal'c as well. Jack and Teal'c's efforts to keep the meal conversation light were nice, but perhaps Sam's approach – bring it out into the open and get it dealt with right there and then, when they were all together – was more efficient. And he really did owe them an explanation, seeing as they already had guessed that he wasn't happy. He was spoiling their fun, after all. Except there was a huge, pretty much intolerable flaw in Sam's plan: the presence of Pete.  
  
He sat and allowed his thoughts free rein, pushing away Sam and Pete's furtive whispering and Teal'c and Jack's arguing. He remembered how Pete had been there in the warehouse when Daniel had filled Sam in on how he'd got himself kidnapped and given up the translation. And yeah, sure, Pete knew about the Stargate, and although the amount he knew was limited, he was well aware of the nature of their jobs. But Pete hadn't been there for the previous seven years, and most importantly, Pete wasn't his friend.  
  
It was pretty clear to Daniel that Sam had no real idea of what she was actually asking him to get into, in wanting him to discuss the medal award. She wasn't clueing in that his most recent adventure into the land of the stupid was only incidental to his feelings on the subject. Daniel felt an odd mix of guilt and righteousness; he appreciated that Sam – and Jack and Teal'c too, he knew – had intuited there was something bothering him about all this, and he equally appreciated Sam's desire to somehow make it right for him. But weren't his feelings his own to share or not as he saw fit? And, most especially, his feelings were none of Pete's business.  
  
He sat there with his eyes closed and his hands in his lap and half-listened to the sounds of the restaurant around him, to the noises of his friends shifting in their chairs, to the clank and clatter of cutlery and dishes and cups and saucers. With Jack and Teal'c light-heartedly arguing over Rita Moreno versus Mary Steenbergen in the background, Daniel seriously wondered if maybe it was time to just call it a night. Just get up and leave. Yes, that's what he'd do. He'd plead tiredness – he had to get up early for that morning meeting, and after that had to be fresh and perky for his lunch with – Oh, wait. He hadn't told Sam yet about the change in plans for tomorrow afternoon.  
  
"Sam. I'm sorry, I forgot to tell..." He opened his eyes to find an empty seat across from him. A light tap on his arm had him turning to face her, now sitting right next to him in what had been Pete's seat. "Oh," he said dumbly, "Uhm, what happened to Pete?"  
  
"He's taking an extended bathroom break. It's probably the special sauce." Despite the irreverence, it was clear Jack wasn't doing the light-hearted thing anymore. He pushed his plate away and leaned forward, placing his arms on the table, looking at Daniel with an assessing gaze, through narrowed eyes. "He's gone back to the hotel, Daniel. It's just us now."  
  
Hell. Daniel sighed and looked away. He was a cad. A first-class cad. His friends wanted this for him; were pleased for him. Knowing that, he really had been doing his best to hide his feelings. For over two weeks now, since the day after he'd first got the word on this thing, he'd been stewing in his own juices, trying to conceal how he really felt. He obviously hadn't done a very good job of it, and now Pete had evidently been banished, having his one evening with Sam in D.C. cut short through no fault of his own.  
  
"This isn't right. I'm sorry, Sam," he tried to make it up to her. "Look, why don't we all call it a night? You go, catch up with Pete and spend the rest of the evening with him." He started to get up, but Jack shot a stern "down, boy" look at him and Teal'c grabbed his upper arm to pull him back into his seat. Reluctantly, he gave in. Apparently the evening was already trashed; might as well see it through, now... not that his friends were giving him a choice in the matter.  
  
Sam bit her lip. "It's more than just the situation with the Trust that's bothering you, isn't it? I'm sorry, Daniel. Other than you mentioning that, you've been so quiet about this whole thing, and I thought... well, I thought that's what was wrong. I thought all that was needed was a bit of cheerleading."  
  
Cheerleading. Daniel stared at her, realising for the first time that she, and probably Jack and Teal'c too, truly didn't have a clue. Either that, or they were being disingenuous and thought he was stupid enough that they could pull the wool over his eyes. That wasn't a very happy nor likely option – no way; they wouldn't do that to him, he thought, so it must be that they didn't see the truth behind this award. Didn't get it. Not even a little bit. They knew he wasn't happy with it, but they thought it was just because he felt guilty and that's as far as it went.  
  
Very possibly, they didn't understand any of what was really going on. That realisation was huge, and confounding. The conversation Sam had been pushing for was something completely different from what she thought, and now he hadn't a clue either – he had no idea what to say. How to begin. Or if he even ought to try beginning in the first place.  
  
Jack was watching him closely. Daniel hated it when Jack watched him with that particular expression on his face. That intent, bird of prey type look. It meant Jack was looking for things that Daniel probably wouldn't want him to find. He raised his head and met Jack's eyes, and after a split second of eye contact Jack drummed his fingers on the tabletop and groaned, "Ah, crap. So, what, then? Dammit, Daniel, you really are something else. The fun never ends."  
  
Daniel took umbrage, because after all it wasn't him who was forcing the issue, but before he had a chance to get out anything more than an initial huff, Jack was up leaving the table. "Just wait a second. Nobody go anywhere." He headed off across the room toward the restaurant reception desk without any explanation. Daniel watched him for a moment before turning back to his empty coffee cup, trying to resign himself to the fact he had little say in whether or not he ought to discuss his real concerns with them.  
  
The three of them sat there in strained silence, Daniel wishing they could just back up two weeks, Sam repeatedly looking like she wanted to say something but then deciding not to, and Teal'c studiously making separate little piles of potato salad in the centre of his plate. There were four piles. Daniel surreptitiously watched as Teal'c took one pile and pushed it off to one side, leaving the other three in the centre. He then flattened out the one he'd moved aside with the back of his fork. Made it into a small, messy potato salad pancake. Daniel saw Sam was also watching, her face twitching with tension as Teal'c carefully nudged each of the three piles farther away from one other and placed a chunk of hamburger in their midst. It was when he smushed the hamburger with his fork and shoved it away that Sam evidently couldn't take it anymore. She suddenly blurted out, "Teal'c, just what are you doing, and can you please stop it?"  
  
Teal'c seemed startled to realise they were watching him, and put down his fork, pushing the plate away. Daniel thought he looked slightly embarrassed. But then Teal'c seemed to think better of it, pulling the plate back toward himself as he tersely replied, "No. It is not yet complete."  
  
He starting depositing individual chunks of the potato salad pancake back into the centre of his plate. It was looking like the reconstruction was going to take quite a while, the way he was going at it with such little bits at a time. Sam's face wrinkled up into a "what the hell is he doing playing with his food, making such a mess" expression, but Daniel was fascinated; he'd never thought Teal'c had so much as a single abstract, symbolic bone in his body. Guess a little misunderstanding mixed with extra potato salad goes a long ways, he thought, as Jack came back to the table with a tray bearing four large cups of hot coffee and a plate full of biscotti.  
  
"Bill's been paid," Jack told them, indicating the empty outside terrace at the far side of the building with a tip of his head. "Out this way. It's more private." He set out and they all got up and followed him, Teal'c pausing just long enough, as he stood up, to hastily shove the rest of the smushed-down pile of potato salad back into the centre of the plate with the others. Daniel quietly muttered a thank you to him for that as they made their way through the restaurant to the glass-walled terrace. Teal'c looked at him out of the corner of his eye, and gave him a dignified nod in response. Sam just stared at them uncomprehendingly, and Daniel really didn't feel like explaining it to her. It felt right, actually, not to explain; it felt like a wordless confidence of sorts had been expressed on that plate, and that between him and Teal'c was where it belonged.  
  
Settling into chairs around one of the glass-topped tables in the otherwise empty glassed-in terrace, the four of them passed around the coffee cups and poked at the biscotti for a few moments, getting themselves organised. Jack picked up one of the chocolate-dipped ones and used it as a pointer, aiming it at Daniel. "So. Spill."  
  
Daniel took a sip of his coffee. He didn't want to spill. He wanted his friends to enjoy tomorrow, even if he wasn't going to. He wanted them to be able to carry on seeing the event through whatever coloured glasses they chose, not the ones he was wearing. But it was probably too late to hang on to that now. He picked that sentiment as his reluctant starting point anyway, just for the hell of it. "Okay, well, just because I'm not happy about all this doesn't mean you guys can't be... I mean, I'd like you to be. Happy, I mean."  
  
"Well, we were," Jack drawled, putting extra emphasis on the word "were".  
  
"Daniel, you do deserve it." Sam was firm in her resolve. "Like I said, I think this should have been done years ago. By now, you deserve even better."  
  
There she was with that cheerleading stuff again. Frustrated, Daniel pointed out, "Sam, what makes you think that I might even begin to buy into the idea of this being a relative thing? The merit of one person's accomplishments measured up against another's? I don't. I won't."  
  
"That's not what I..." she started to say, but Daniel interrupted her.  
  
"It may not be what you really believe, I know that, but it's the rallying cheer you chose. Do you realise what that baseball player you mentioned did with his life, other than to be one of the best in his sport? He dedicated himself to helping people who were less fortunate than he was, Sam, and he lost his life doing just that. Who's to say whose achievements are more valuable than anyone else's? I'd prefer that you didn't make relative judgements about my worth compared to anyone else, okay?" At the miserable look on her face, he reached out for her hand, softening his tone. "I realise what you've been trying to do, and I do appreciate it. I can't tell you how much it means to me to know how you feel about this."  
  
"I too feel as Colonel Carter does," Teal'c said. "I understand that you undervalue yourself, Daniel Jackson, and therefore might be reluctant to accept this award. However, I do not understand why you appear to be angry over being offered it."  
  
Angry? Damn. He'd tried so hard to hide it. "Wh... no. No, I'm not –"  
  
"Yes you are." Jack waved the biscotti at him. "What, you think you're that good? You're not that good, Daniel. You've been building up a head of steam since right after the thing was announced. Walking around smiling and saying thank you and boy what an honour on the outside while you bitch and whine and complain to yourself on the inside."  
  
Sam was nodding, her face clouded with confusion and an edge of what looked, to Daniel's surprise, almost like resentment. "What is it? What could be so bad about being rewarded for all you've accomplished?"  
  
"Do you truly not want this, Daniel?" Teal'c quietly asked him.  
  
Jack was watching him with that penetrating look. It forced the truth out of him like a bird pulling a worm out of a hole. "No, no, I truly don't want this. I'm sorry, but I don't."  
  
There was uncomfortable silence at the table, broken only by the faint dull sound Jack's biscotti sliding back and forth along the edge of his coffee cup. Realising no one was going to say anything, Daniel hurried to explain himself. "Look, it's not that I wouldn't appreciate being honoured. If that's what this was, that'd be... well, it'd be embarrassing, but it'd be fine. An honour. But that's not what this is."  
  
"It's not." Jack's tone was flat, and Daniel wasn't sure if the words were a question or a statement.  
  
"No, it's not." He treated it as if it were either, giving what could be taken as an answer or as agreement. "Far from it."  
  
Sam shook her head. "Why not? Why isn't it? It's supposed to be."  
  
"It's a public award, Sam," Daniel pointed out. "It's publicly announced, and publicly recorded." She was smart. She'd see what he was saying.  
  
But then again... "Yes. So?" Sam spread her hands in question.  
  
Daniel sighed. Why didn't she see it? Suddenly uncertain, he wondered if maybe he was wrong – if he was blowing this all out of proportion. He gnawed on his lower lip, no longer knowing if he was coming or going, and then Sam abruptly leaned forward and dumped the stick of biscotti she'd been nibbling on into her coffee. "Wait. It's public." She stared at Daniel, her eyes narrowed in concentration. "So..." She slowly said, "What exactly are they going to write in the public register, about why they're giving it to you? Have you seen any copy?"  
  
Jack broke in. "I've seen an early draft. It was fine. Said something along the lines of having made an outstanding contribution to the security of the United States through an act of heroism, blah blah blah. Something else about cultural endeavours. Pretty vague stuff."  
  
Daniel waved a hand, dismissing the relevance of that. "How they word the blurb isn't important. The important thing is simply, specifically, that it is public." He grimaced in distaste, reminded of the inaugural meeting he had to attend in the morning, as he added, "Just as public as my new and oh so bogus appointment to their brand new Federal Fiscal Responsibility watchdog committee."  
  
They still didn't seem to understand the importance he'd placed on the public nature of the award, but that last reference they clearly understood. There was a moment of silence as they worked on deciphering his take on the relationship between what they all knew was purely political manipulation and the Medal of Freedom award. When Jack broke the silence, his tone was one of frustration. "Wonderful train of illogic, Daniel. Just wonderful. The committee appointment is a sham, so you don't want the Medal of Freedom."  
  
Jack was being obtuse. Daniel wasn't sure if it was purposeful or not, but really didn't care. He was getting angry over having to explain himself like this. "The committee itself is a sham, Jack. My appointment to it just makes the problem real on a personal level. You know that. As for the medal, I don't want to be used as a means to someone's political ends, is what I don't want. It's not rewarding; it's demeaning."  
  
Jack stared at him, grimacing as if he was sucking on a particularly bad lemon, while both Teal'c and Sam were looking anywhere but at Jack or him. "You think," Jack said slowly, "that you're being used? That the only reason you're receiving formal recognition is because it benefits Hayes, or whoever?"  
  
"Yes." Daniel nodded firmly, surprised when they all still didn't seem to be on the same page as him. God, wasn't it obvious to them yet? "Yes. That's what I think. Do you really believe Hayes would ever have been willing to do this simply in recognition of the things I've done working in the SGC? That it ever would have even occurred to him to do this unless there was something in it for him? I don't think so."  
  
"Oh, Daniel." Sam weakly muttered. "That's not what this is about."  
  
No," he corrected her, "I think that is what it's about. Actually, that's not simply what I think, it's what I'm convinced of. Just look at it, at the big picture..."  
  
"The big picture," Jack repeated, looking as if he'd just swallowed that badder than bad lemon whole.  
  
"Yes. The big picture, Jack." Daniel started ticking off his points one by one on his fingers. "First, Hayes brought Weir in for a particular reason – a semblance of not only civilian involvement, but civilian control, remember? – but now the SGC is back under 100% military leadership, leaving that objective hanging. Second, other than the top levels of governments in whatever respective countries having access to whatever little information Washington decides to tell them, actual international participation on the program is limited to one Russian team within the SGC, and outside the SGC it's limited to scientific teams who don't have access to the real truth about the Stargate. Hell, they don't have access to even half the information they need to really do their jobs properly. Except for who? Those American civilian scientists who work from deep within the system. Like me."  
  
He saw the truth of what he was saying mirrored in their eyes and their reluctance to meet his gaze. "Third, and we've all known this for years now, the 'gate and the SGC are proof positive that the bigger a secret something is, the harder it is to keep. Whether the time is right or not, whether we like it or not, this thing is going to become public knowledge sooner rather than later, and Hayes is smart enough to make sure that –"  
  
"Daniel Ja–" Teal'c started to interrupt, but cut it off mid-word as Jack abruptly, forcefully, raised a hand and slashed it through the air.  
  
"So you believe that giving you the Medal of Freedom is simply his way of paving his road of good intentions before the traffic busts out of the parking lot."  
  
Daniel winced at Jack's analogy, but at least it meant that in essence Jack understood what he was saying, albeit taking it maybe just a bit too far. "Well, yes and no. Yes; I think that for Hayes honouring my participation now, as early as possible before the floodgates inevitably get opened, is a politically expedient starting point toward re-addressing the same perception problem that brought Weir into the SGC. And no, I'm not actually the paving on his road – not specifically me, anyway – because as an individual, I'm hardly sufficiently important or noteworthy to be enough to actually do the job for him. It isn't really about me at all. None of this is about me."  
  
"This is about you, Daniel Jackson. The politics of this government do not matter. I do not understand why you would not wish such an award when it is so clearly well deserved." Teal'c sounded confused, and almost desperate to contradict him. "This event is to honour you."  
  
Daniel touched his good friend lightly on the arm. "No, Teal'c, it isn't. It's to use me as a tool, as much and as visibly as possible. Just look at tonight's farce. That's a good example of what this is really about. It's all about getting an upper hand in the game."  
  
"Why do the shenanigans of politicians matter, if the act is right and just?" Teal'c asked, and Daniel started to suspect that Teal'c wasn't so much still trying to understand as he was trying to sway Daniel's own perceptions.  
  
He'd answer the question anyway, because no matter Teal'c's motive in asking, there was a fundamental, personal hurt in all this that was inescapable for Daniel, and his friends might as well know what that was. It felt easier to work his way up to it rather than blurting it right out, though; easier to talk about it in a roundabout way for the moment. "Did you ask yourself, Teal'c, why you were banned from that cocktail party tonight? Did you stop to think about why they'd even hold such an event, with so many of the guests not even knowing about the existence of the Stargate, when there's already going to be an actual awards ceremony tomorrow for those in the know?"  
  
"Washington cocktail parties are all about posturing, Daniel. Politicians do that. They live for it. It's in their blood."  
  
"Yes, Jack, I know. But I really don't think that tonight was as innocent and inconsequential as them just using an upcoming medal award presentation as an excuse to hold another same-old, same-old."  
  
"What, then?" Sam asked.  
  
Daniel looked straight into her eyes as he answered. "Sam, don't you think it's rather inconceivable that pretty much all of Washington isn't at least on some level aware that there's some sort of big secret lurking in their midst?" She nodded in acknowledgement, and as she looked away from him Daniel was confused over the degree of stubborn-looking non-comprehension he thought he saw on her face. He forged ahead, though. "As acclimated now as Teal'c is, with that crowd he'd still be a bit too much of a red flag in that particular bullring." Daniel looked to Jack for confirmation, and got a resigned shrug that yes, that was probably the case. "So he can go tomorrow, where everyone who's going to be there knows all about him anyway, but he couldn't go tonight. Tonight was about working things around to Hayes' best advantage – about trading off the secret, not taking a chance of losing control of it."  
  
Jack interrupted him. "Like I said. Posturing. Nothing more, nothing less."  
  
Sam frowned at him, but then her face cleared. "Oh. Oh, okay, I see what you are getting at, Daniel. Sir, he's right about that part of it." She looked from Daniel over to Jack. "President Hayes wants to stay in power once knowledge of the Stargate starts to irretrievably leak out, and that's going to be enough of a battle as it is, even if he's ready for it to happen; or in fact, even if he has a hand in making it happen. There's going to be quite an uproar, so he has to be careful and plan well ahead. Ultimately, he wants to keep control over the SGC within the United States. In other words, to continue to rest with him. He's going to need personal allies within Washington, and within the governments of other countries who already know about the Stargate. Lots of allies."  
  
"Yes. And allies don't necessarily have to be friends... just people who can help you." Daniel nodded at her and turned to Teal'c, as it was him who'd inadvertently asked for the bald truth of why this was such an issue for Daniel. "Tonight was about me being representative of Hayes' special little secret, paraded out into a room full of ambitious people, some of who do and some of who don't know about the Stargate or about who I am or what I've done. So that those who aren't in the know can wonder about who I am, really, and what my relationship with Hayes is, and wonder if the guy standing next to them knows more or less than they do, and if there's any way they might be able to take advantage of any of it. Like I said, tonight was for Hayes and his buddies to trade off the secret. And for when the project finally is revealed, for everyone to remember their places."  
  
"I thought you just said it wasn't about you, Daniel." For some reason, Jack was making this really hard for him. "One minute it isn't even about you, and the next, you're Hayes' means to his ends. You know what I'm thinking here? I'm thinking you're blowing this all up out of proportion. I repeat: it's just posturing."  
  
Daniel looked down at the tabletop and toyed with his coffee cup for a moment, then looked back up at his friends. "For them, as far as they know, yeah, it's the same old game. For Hayes I suspect it's more involved than just that. And for me, well, for me it's something very different."  
  
He swallowed against a suddenly dry mouth, and forged on ahead. "When I made the decision to ascend, it was because I wanted to... to do more. I thought I would have a chance to finally really make a difference, but all that appears to have happened was that..." He faltered a bit on the truth, then pushed it out. "From what I've remembered so far and from what I've been told, the truth of the matter was that instead of making a difference, I effectively had to turn my back on pretty much all I thought I stood for. I was emasculated of everything I held to be true of myself and of everything I believed was really important."  
  
He raised a hand to stop the objection he saw forming on Teal'c's lips. "Wait. Just wait, okay? I don't want to hear about how I appeared to you and helped you. That's not enough. It doesn't even put a dent in it." Teal'c frowned at him but held his tongue. Jack wouldn't look him in the eye, and Daniel figured he should just finally get this over with. "When I returned, I struggled with trying to make sense of it all – I'm still struggling – and the glimpses I've had of my time as an ascended being have helped me realise there aren't any shortcuts. I've been working hard trying to make up for the time I was ascended. And up until recently I felt like who I am, and what I believe in, and what I can contribute really do matter. That if I keep my eye on the ball and work at it, I can make that difference. That I belong."  
  
Sam whispered, "You do, Daniel."  
  
He thought of four lumps of potato salad, and had to smile, but the smile immediately faded as he told them how he really felt. "But this thing... for me, this takes all that and twists it all around. Tomorrow when I accept that medal, it won't be because what I do is important and makes a difference; it'll be because I'm a prostitute to someone else's agenda. And the feeling that's the bottom-line sum total of my worth to them isn't going to go away, because my name will be forever publicly tied to that agenda, and because this committee membership and the award will just be the beginning. They're playing with a different ball, and they're pulling me out of my game to use me in theirs."  
  
He couldn't look at them. "I'll do it because I have to, because just shutting up and going through with it is in the best interests of the SGC. But please don't ask me to enjoy it. And don't ask me when and where and how I'm going to rediscover those feelings of belonging and being able to make the right kind of difference, because I have no idea if that's even going to be possible."  
  
There were a few seconds of silence, then Jack slammed back in his seat, his chair rocking with the impact. "Shit," was all he said. Sam put her elbows on the table and buried her face in her hands.  
  
He heard a rough, almost primitive-sounding rumble, and the noise puzzled him for a second until he realised it was coming from Teal'c, next to him. The deep growl from low in Teal'c's throat was short, but impossible to miss. Jack leaned forward and pointed at Teal'c, his finger jabbing the air in emphasis with his words. "No, don't start. Just don't start with me."  
  
"I will 'start' with whoever I please, O'Neill." Teal'c turned to Daniel. "If you believe this recognition to be a lie, and feel your reasons for not wishing to participate are well justified, then is not your own behaviour dishonest?"  
  
"Oh god, Teal'c... that's just the point he's –" Sam stopped mid-sentence, clamping her lips tightly together. They all waited for her to continue, Daniel with his heart sinking as he realised she probably wasn't going to back him up with the less obvious aspects of the question, after all. Sure enough, after a moment of apparently frustrated indecision she just shook her head and looked away.  
  
Teal'c's question, taken in its most literal form, was basically rhetorical; Daniel didn't bother answering it. The answer was a self-evident yes. The motives behind his handling of the issue were less straight-forward, but judging by Sam's reluctance to bring it up they probably weren't interested in hashing over just why he'd chosen the path he had – not only to go with the official program despite its impact on him, but to try to hide the depth of his feelings from his friends. He figured now that trying to avoid discussing the real truth behind the medal award probably had been a mistake. But even so, he wasn't at all sure he could have done any differently.  
  
It had hurt to realise that to those at the top his participation in the SGC was valued according to its usefulness as political hay. It had hurt too much for him to face head-on, at first, the fact that recognition for his efforts was actually only recognition of his utility to them, and when he had faced that sad reality the pleasure and excitement of others who were so thrilled for him only served to magnify his growing sense of isolation from all that he'd thought he was such an integral part of. That this wasn't the first time he'd been played for a chump was almost unbearable.  
  
Watching Jack, Teal'c, and Sam now, Daniel was honestly unable to tell if they primarily felt upset for him, or, rather, were upset by him. It wasn't a moot distinction, and as he realised he wasn't sure which of the two he was seeing, Daniel felt that gulf of understanding and perception he'd been experiencing over the last several weeks stretch out to become so impossibly wide that he didn't know how to even begin trying to bridge it. At least not now, not tonight, anyway.  
  
He stood up. "Look, I'm really sorry about all this. Jack, you may be right – I might be blowing this all up out of proportion. I'm not sure." The lie stung his throat and he had to swallow hard before he could continue. "I am pretty sure, though, that this isn't getting us anywhere. Nowhere good, anyway."  
  
Sam slid her coffee cup away from her. "You're probably right. Maybe we should call it a night." She slid back her chair, readying herself to stand up, and looked up at him. "Daniel, I'm sure Pete won't mind cooling his heels for awhile before we head out tomorrow; maybe we can talk about this at lunch, when you get back from your meeting, if..." She looked around the table at Jack and Teal'c, seeking their agreement.  
  
Jack shook his head. "Don't look at me. I'm in meetings for the day. Wasn't going to be tagging along with you guys anyway." He aimed a level stare at Daniel as he spoke, and Daniel remembered that yes, right, he did have something he had better tell Sam and Teal'c, didn't he.  
  
"Yeah, about that. Sam, I'm sorry," Daniel apologised. "I can't go with you. I'm expected for a one o'clock lunch with President Sinclair and his wife."  
  
In rapid succession, Sam looked surprised, then disappointed, and then more than just a bit frustrated with him, stiffening as she simply said, "Oh. I see." She looked down at the tabletop for a moment, and when she looked back up at him it was clear she'd chosen to take the high road. Standing up and pushing her chair in, she gracefully let him off the hook. "Well, that's okay. It's not like we're setting out to save the world or anything. It's just sight-seeing." She leaned forward, gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and moved away from the table. "I'm off then. Teal'c? We should decide what time we want to get going tomorrow."  
  
As she stood waiting for him, Teal'c gave Jack a nod of farewell, then stood still for a moment, tipping his head slightly to one side as he silently regarded Daniel. Still without a word, he turned and joined Sam, and the two of them left, winding their way around tables. Daniel watched them go, miserable over the way things had turned out. For some unfathomable reason, it seemed his feelings over being yet again being taken for a patsy had disappointed them far more than could be accounted for by his not sharing their pleasure.  
  
"Well." Jack was still seated, playing with the same stick of biscotti he'd started out with. There was melted chocolate on his fingers, Daniel noticed, and a portion of the rim of his coffee cup looked as though it had been dipped in mud. Jack didn't seem to notice, or if he did he didn't seem to care. He just sat there, tapping the end of the biscotti against the table, looking at Daniel thoughtfully. "Well, well," he repeated. Tap, tap, tap. The end of the stick broke off, and he started pushing it around on the glass surface of the table, wielding the rest of the biscotti like it was a hockey stick, creating smudged brown trails on the tabletop. Daniel flashed back to Teal'c and his potato salad, and wondered if maybe there was some sort of subliminal message in the streaks of shitty brown Jack was making. Hmph. Yeah. Probably.  
  
"Well," Jack said again, and promptly reached forward and dropped the biscotti into Daniel's coffee cup. He licked the chocolate off his fingers. "What a goddamned mess."  
  
Daniel silently agreed. Yes it was. If they'd just have left him alone, hadn't forced him to bring his feelings over all this out into the open...  
  
Jack stood up, abruptly asking, "So what do you want to do?"  
  
"What do...?" Confused, Daniel gestured toward the street entrance. "Uhm... go back to the hotel?"  
  
Jack gave him a disgusted look. "Oh, please. You know damned well what I'm referring to."  
  
No, no he didn't, actually. Daniel felt the frown on his face, the deep furrows in his brow, and let it do the talking for him. Jack peered at him for a moment, and then let out a long sigh. He circled the table, leaving, and as he walked by Daniel he said in passing, "Okay, so maybe you don't. Too busy dictating the truth according to Daniel Jackson to grab a clue, I guess."  
  
What? Daniel stood there for an instant, bordering on being completely dumbfounded, and then leaped forward to catch up to Jack in several long strides. He whipped around to stand in front of Jack. "Wait just a minute. What's that supposed to mean?"  
  
"It means, Daniel, what do you want to do about the award ceremony? If you feel the whole thing is so demeaning, then don't go. It's that simple." Jack's tone was far too excessively patient, especially considering he was being disingenuous, which told Daniel he was about an inch away from being patronised.  
  
It made him angry, and he blurted out, "Oh, screw that, Jack. You know damned well I have to go. And you know just as damned well that's got nothing to do with what I was asking you." He made quote marks in the air with his fingers, "'Dictating the truth according to Daniel Jackson' –"  
  
Jack made eye contact with him, but didn't answer right away, shoving his hands into his pants pockets and looking like he was considering something very weighty. When Daniel saw Jack's eyes narrow slightly, he knew Jack had decided not to beat around the bush. "You know, Daniel, you're the only guy I've ever met who can be so, so completely wrong while being right. Yes, okay, we get it. Hayes and his pals are taking advantage. They're using you. You're probably quite right, too, in that who, or what, you think you are isn't who or what you are to them." Jack pulled one hand out of his pocket and tapped Daniel on the chest. "And you're right about something else... which of course is why you are so, so, oh so wrong."  
  
Uh, what? Daniel felt his mouth moving of its own accord, doing that fish-gulpy thing he hated about himself. Made him look idiotic. He clamped his jaw, and very nearly bit one side of his tongue in the process. Gad, what a fool. "So, so, so... what am I so right about that I'm wrong?" he managed to force out, confused and utterly frustrated, knowing there was an important message coming here, but not having a clue what it was.  
  
"Daniel, you're a smart guy. You were right when you said there's no way it would have occurred to Hayes, on his own, to do something like this in recognition of the things you've been through, the things you've done. For the SGC. For Earth. For all of us. He wouldn't. And he didn't."  
  
Jack walked around him, nudging him with his shoulder as he passed by. "We did, Mr. Smart Guy. Me, Hammond, Teal'c, and Carter. Which makes you the stupidest guy this side of the Pegasus Galaxy."  
  
He tossed a last comment over his shoulder as he walked away. "If you decide not to attend, just be sure to let me know in advance. I'll try to keep my cell on." And then he was gone.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Sitting alone in the back of a chauffeured car for the third time that morning, Daniel fingered his cellphone. He replayed in his mind the message Sam had left on the hotel answering service that morning, and wondered if he ought to give her a call. She'd sounded cheerful enough – maybe a bit too cheerful; perhaps a bit forced, he wondered – as she'd told him that they'd try to get back to the hotel in the afternoon in time to see him before he had to leave, but couldn't promise they'd make it.  
  
He was being picked up for the awards ceremony a bit earlier than everyone else. He hadn't had a problem with that before last night, the reason for the extra time being that he was going to spend the hour or so before the main event with General Hammond and Jack. Now, though, after last night, he was looking forward to four o'clock with an awkward mix of yearning and trepidation. Jack was right – he'd been terribly wrong in being right, and he owed them all an apology. Visions of him, Jack, and General Hammond amicably sorting it out, deciding what to do about it all, and relaxing over coffee drew him in like a fly to honey, but that wishful scenario still didn't change how badly and deeply he felt about being used. In fact, knowing that the sincere best intentions of his friends had been so calculatedly manipulated to suit Hayes' purposes just added fuel to that particular fire. He absolutely did not want this, even though he now knew the original motivation behind it had been the honest appreciation of his friends rather than the dehumanising political expedience that had taken centre stage with him.  
  
Sam had said she hoped he was getting through the morning meeting without too much suffering, and that she hoped he'd enjoy his lunch with the Sinclairs. And that he shouldn't hesitate to give her and Teal'c a call on her cell phone if he wanted to, for any reason, at any time during the day. Well, he had good reason to do just that – there was that apology he owed them, and he really didn't want them breaking their day off short just to catch a few minutes with him at the hotel. That wouldn't be fair to them.  
  
He dialled her number slowly, and stared at the phone as his thumb hovered over the send button. The numbers called out, yes, yes, just call them, just a quick word and a quick sorry so they know that you know, but his thumb wasn't co-operating. What if they were in the middle of something, and couldn't or didn't want to talk to him just then? Or, what if they weren't, and still, despite Sam's message, didn't want to talk to him? He wouldn't blame them; basically he'd taken their gift and flung it back in their faces. Of course, it had come addressed from someone else, wrapped in second-hand sackcloth sincerity... but they hadn't really seen that. They'd seen what they'd originally intended – the gift they originally bought, not the perversion of use it was put to by their delivery-man.  
  
Two weeks worth of his sulking around, capped off by last night's overt rejection of what they'd no doubt gone to a lot of trouble to lobby for, had hurt them. So. Just do it. His thumb punched the send button, and when the little arrow began to dot its way across the screen he put the phone to his ear. And the car went right down a short ramp and into a wide, completely enclosed drive-through attached to the side of a large, white, colonial-style building. A metal-roofed drive-though, apparently, judging by the way the phone signal abruptly disappeared.  
  
Closing his eyes momentarily in annoyance, Daniel leaned forward and asked the Sinclair's driver, "Is this it, then?" and the man – Peter, he'd said his name was, when he'd picked Daniel up at the hotel – nodded and told him he'd drop him off right in front of the lower entrance. All he'd have to do was go up a short flight of steps and introduce himself at the main desk; President Sinclair was already in the dining room, waiting for him. Peter smiled a dark-eyed, dark-haired handsome smile at Daniel over his shoulder, and told him he'd pick him up right here, later, at the same place he was being dropped off, when he was done.  
  
In the next instant, the car pulled up next to an impressively large, ornately etched and decorated set of glass doors, waited on by a man in black and white formal attire. Wearing spats and white gloves, no less. As the automatic lock on his door released with a faint snick, Daniel turned the cellphone off and slid it into his pocket. This really didn't look like the sort of place he should slouch on in to with a cellphone attached to his ear. He'd call Sam and Teal'c later, after lunch, and make sure they knew not to cut their day off early on his account.  
  
The doorman held the door open for him, greeting him by name, saying he was expected, and politely gave him directions as to where he should go once he was upstairs. Daniel noticed a slight quizzical lift to one of the man's eyebrows as he went by into the building, and it was only when he was halfway up the wide, granite flight of stairs that it occurred to Daniel he'd probably just missed something a bit delicate here. But he wasn't sure. Feeling foolish, he darted back down the steps, not quite sure how to gracefully handle this, but figuring that the direct approach was probably best. He fumbled in his pants pocket just in case, and then pushed the door open, sticking his head through.  
  
"Uhm, excuse me?" The doorman turned to face him, and reached out to hold the door open. The raised eyebrow had been joined by a slight twitching of lips, Daniel noticed. Yep, he had definitely missed something. "I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with... I'm not sure if I'm supposed to... ahh..."  
  
The doorman half-grinned, then smothered it and shook his head. "No, sir, not necessary. We don't accept gratuities." Daniel ahh-ed an unspoken thank you, but just before he turned away to re-enter the building, the doorman's eyebrow danced upward again and he gestured toward Daniel's chest as he advised, "Sir? If I may? You might wish to lose the tie."  
  
Daniel frowned, but figured that part of the doorman's job probably involved making sure people didn't enter under-dressed. If the man said tie-less was acceptable, then it probably was. Nodding another thank you, he loosened and slipped off his tie as he went up the steps. And then considered stripping off his suit jacket as well as he got to the top and found himself on plush red carpeting under an ornate vaulted ceiling, in the company of people incongruously dressed in anything but dinner-wear. The lobby area was set up as a large, comfortable study, with acres worth of polished bookcases and intimate groupings of comfortable chairs. In and around them sat and wandered about ten or so men, that Daniel could see right off, anyway, and nary a one of them was wearing anything more... well, just more... than the equivalent of casual slacks, golf shirts, and loafers.  
  
The reception desk was located directly to the right of where Daniel was standing. He undid all the buttons on his suit jacket and stuffed his tie into his pocket as he went over to it. The spit and polished attendant smiled at him, also calling him by name, and before Daniel could really get his bearings he was being swept along by a pretty young lady, out of the main lobby area and around a couple of corners. She showed him where there were washrooms located right inside the entrance to the dining area, and without so much as a pause in their relentless forward motion ushered him directly to a table at the far end of the elegant room.  
  
Ray Sinclair saw them coming, and rose to greet him. "Dr. Jackson. Glad you could make it. How are you?" Daniel murmured that he was fine, thank you, they shook hands, and the young lady smoothly deposited him into his chair and vanished. Left wondering just how she'd got him from point A to point B without him really being aware of most of the trip, Daniel looked around the room curiously. Sinclair sat patiently, sipping coffee, as Daniel took a few minutes to acclimate himself. He took in the fine bone china and the abundance of soft, fresh bread rolls on the table, and figured both that the food was probably excellent and that Jack wasn't going to get any leftovers. Not that Daniel was at all hungry; he just highly doubted this kitchen stocked doggy-bags. Overall, it wasn't his kind of place, really, he decided. More than just a bit on the stuffy side. Stodgy, certainly, even despite the casual dress of the members.  
  
He turned his attention back to his host just in time to see Sinclair discreetly raise a finger in signal to someone behind where Daniel sat. Sinclair unfolded his napkin and fussed about with settling it on his lap, smiling easily as he cheerfully told Daniel, "I've taken the liberty of pre-ordering lunch for us. I hope you don't mind? There are only a three choices on the luncheon menu, and one of them involves tuna salad." He grimaced and wrinkled his nose in a show of displeasure over the tuna, and then turned the smile back on. "So I've ordered one each of the other two selections for us. You're welcome to whichever you prefer." Daniel had a rebellious urge to tell him that it was the tuna he'd actually prefer, thank you very much. He liked tuna. A lot.  
  
It occurred to him they were missing both a person and a meal order, though, and he waggled his fingers toward one of the two empty chairs at their table. "I'm sorry, I understood your wife was to be here?"  
  
Sinclair's smile slipped. "Ah, no. No. Of course not. Why would you think that?"  
  
Daniel was at a loss to explain how he'd got that impression, but he hadn't been alone in that understanding. Jack had assumed that was the case as well. Their mistake, Daniel figured. Not a big deal. At Daniel's question, though, Sinclair's bonhomie had given way to that intense look Daniel had been on the receiving end of at the cocktail party, and if anything the tension in the man's face was intensifying by the moment. Daniel felt distinctly uncomfortable. He apologised faintly for misunderstanding and fussed with getting his own napkin smoothed out on his lap, and was saved from further scrutiny by the abrupt appearance of bowls of steaming hot soup and plates of fresh salad in front of both him and his host.  
  
Sinclair switched streams like a spawning salmon heading for home, a smile leaping onto his face after only a split second of minor turbulence. He waved a hand at the soup, encouraging Daniel to try it. Whet his appetite for the main course. The food was excellent; he'd love it, Sinclair was certain. Daniel stirred the soup gently and took a tentative sip from his spoon, watching as Sinclair spooned up his own soup with an intensity that certainly didn't seem warranted. It wasn't that good. The rate at which the man was attacking the appetisers did serve to put a dampener on any attempts at conversation, though. That was all right. Daniel wasn't exactly looking forward to them getting down to just why he was here anyway.  
  
Daniel forewent the soup and ate his salad in silence, and a bit after that, when he was back with the soup and mid-way through separating the small chunks of carrots and celery from one another – getting frustrated with the barley's tendency to float into his way – Sinclair suddenly said, "My wife isn't able to go out much. Last night was a rare exception." He pushed his dishes away from him, and ran his fingertips along the edge of his empty soup bowl. "Aren't you going to eat the soup? It's good soup. Mavis always liked the soup here, but she can't eat out anymore. She's an insulin-dependent diabetic, you know."  
  
No, Daniel didn't know. And although he had been both fascinated and moved by Mavis Sinclair, he wasn't sure he really wanted to know. He'd been dreading having what Sinclair might want from him confirmed, hoping against hope it wouldn't be what he thought. He made what he thought were probably appropriately sympathetic noises, and Sinclair rambled on without acknowledging Daniel's offering. "She's relegated to a very strict diet now. The diabetes is relatively new; it's because she's so compromised by... well, anyway, it's dangerously brittle. She's spent more time in the clinic than she has at home these last few weeks. It's very frustrating for her. She's always been so healthy, so active."  
  
Sinclair gave a signal and a busboy came and took their plates. An instant later a waiter deposited their meals in front of them. Another hovered nearby, and ritual wine-tasting ensued. All the savoir faire disappeared from Sinclair's demeanour the moment they were left alone again. He stared down at the plate in front of him, probably not even seeing what was on it. "I guess you're wondering why I've pushed you into coming here to meet with me," he said softly.  
  
"No. Not really. Not wondering, I mean." Sinclair looked up at him then, and as gently as he could Daniel told him the truth. "Sir, I'm sorry, but as much as I'd like to, I don't think there's any way I can help you."  
  
"I think you can," Sinclair answered him, taking a sip of wine. He tipped the glass slightly toward Daniel. "Even if you don't see it as that."  
  
Daniel frowned, not sure what that meant. He sure as hell hoped it wouldn't have anything to do with Goa'uld sarcophagi or Asgard beamy-thingys, or Nox hands-on healing. Or, god forbid, glowy energy beings. He spread his hands wide, half-shrugging his uncertainty. "I don't understand."  
  
"Hope can be a good and constructive thing, but sometimes it can also be a curse. An obstruction." Sinclair drank a third of his wine in one go, and set the glass down on the table just that bit too hard. "I'm a pragmatist, Dr. Jackson. Always have been. I don't believe in blind faith, and I don't believe in being strung along by false hopes, by wishes that can never be granted. But, at the same time, I can't seem to... I can't..."  
  
Sinclair's voice broke slightly, and he took another sip of wine, then cleared his throat noisily. Daniel sat there feeling completely inadequate. And underneath that, frustrated and angry, because he knew what was out there, what treasures of life and technology and spirit existed that could turn what seemed like false hope into solid reality. Oh, if only it were within his power to harness and use them... but it wasn't. And hell, even when it had been, he hadn't been able to make it happen.  
  
Sinclair cleared his throat again, and this time finished the sentence. "I can't seem to give up on hoping, no matter how much my better judgement tells me it's false hopes I'm clinging to. And it's getting in the way." He leaned forward, pinning Daniel with another of his intense gazes. "Have you ever wanted something so much that even though you know you can never have it the wanting leads you again and again to its door, when you should be going somewhere else? Doing something else? I'm frozen in place here, Dr. Jackson. Pinned to the wall by hope."  
  
Daniel gaped at him. "And you want me... me?... to just... just, what? To dash those hopes once and for all for you? To tell you you're right to give up?" How could he do that? He couldn't. How could this man think him capable of just callously saying that no, there was no way, no hope, no anything.  
  
"No, no, of course not." Sinclair looked faintly impatient with him. "Indifferent false indulgence isn't what I'm looking for. And if it were, do you really think I'd come to you – to Dr. Daniel Jackson, guardian of truth, justice and the all American way – to get it?" He waved a hand in a gesture of dismissal. "I may be desperate, but I'm not delusional. I'm well aware you can't conjure up a quick fix, not one way nor the other."  
  
Daniel was uncomfortable with both the tone and language just used – it might be because he was touchy to start with these days, but it felt like he'd just been insulted in the same breath as the one used to ask for his help. He pushed that discomfort aside and concentrated on the issue of what Sinclair might want from him. As former President, Sinclair would know, of course, that it was impossible for Daniel to wave any alien magic wands for him. And if it wasn't that, and it wasn't callous hope-bashing Sinclair wanted – which was good because there was no way he was getting that either from Daniel – then there must be something else. He suddenly realised that what he'd said to Sinclair, that there wasn't anything he could do to help him, wasn't the bottom-line truth of the matter just because Daniel thought so. For all he knew, there was something he could feasibly do to help that just wasn't clear to him right off the bat.  
  
"Okay. So, what can I do for you?" Daniel volunteered with sincerity, leaning forward over his plate to snag his wine glass. At his offer, Sinclair sagged slightly with what looked to Daniel like cautious relief.  
  
"What I'm hoping you can do for me is something you really shouldn't do, and I realise I have no right to ask you to do," Sinclair warned him. "I'm no longer in office, and at this time I don't meet criteria for inclusion on the need to know list."  
  
Oh. Right. Daniel took a sip of wine and thought about that. Sinclair, a fairly rigid pragmatist, had a problem with hope; with understanding where he stood. And he was out of the loop. "Have you spoken with anyone else? Approached anyone else?" Daniel asked him. He rather needed to know that, and what the outcome of it might have been, before he could decide whether or not he should knowingly break the letter of the law of national security here.  
  
"I've spoken with Rob – I'm sorry, President Hayes. He was sympathetic, but said things had changed since I was last privy to any information. He'll keep an eye out in case any opportunities arise." Sinclair looked faintly ill as he admitted that, and, Daniel was surprised to see, also somewhat frightened. Taking a deep breath, Sinclair told Daniel two things that Daniel already knew. "That's President-speak for 'don't call me, I'll call you'. But I've never been one for sitting around at home on a Friday night waiting for the phone to ring."  
  
Daniel nodded. Yeah, neither had he. Sinclair needed more than what he already had; whether that was because he hadn't been told much of anything or because he didn't trust the person saying it wasn't any of Daniel's business. Decision made. "All right. So what would you like to know?"  
  
Sinclair sat back and his eyes filled momentarily, so Daniel took a slow, deliberate sip of wine in order to give him a moment. In short order, Sinclair composed himself and picked up his fork. He pushed some food around on his plate and then ate a forkful, and thanked Daniel for being willing to help him without actually saying it right out. "Please, eat. There's not much more than this I can offer you. You should at least leave here with a full stomach."  
  
Daniel looked down at his plate. It was laden with fresh fruit and vegetables, and a heap of some sort of creamy stuff on a bed of red lettuce. He tried it, more to please Sinclair than because he was hungry, and found it was potato salad. More or less pureed, weirdly enough, but he could taste lots of egg in it, and just the right amount of mustard. It reminded him of Teal'c, and of the phone call he had to make, and for a moment he contemplated excusing himself to the washroom and taking care of that. He didn't want to be rude, though, and somehow it felt like getting up from the table just then would be disrespectful of Sinclair's situation.  
  
He stayed, and ate all of it, and all of the fruit and vegetables too, and drank two glasses of wine to boot, while he told Sinclair what he needed to know. About the current dismal status of the Tok'ra, and that no, they had no idea how to contact them, including Jacob Carter. That Sam's ability to use Goa'uld devices – specifically the healing device – had declined steadily over the years since Jolinar had died within her, to the point that now Sam was barely able to make the device glow. They didn't know quite why that had happened, but there it was: no hope there. No sarcophagi on tap anywhere, no, and yes, the Asgard certainly had the ability to help, but whether they'd be willing was another story entirely. Mavis was just one person out of billions, and the Asgard were just as pragmatic as Sinclair himself. And Sinclair well knew, anyway, that President Hayes would never approve of them asking the Asgard to intervene in this.  
  
During their conversation, it was made clear to Daniel that Sinclair wasn't asking him for anything more than to be filled in on the status quo, and as he answered Sinclair's questions, Daniel understood that in effect Sinclair was holding his list of hopes up to the bright light of reality, testing the feasibility of continuing to cling to, or of finally surrendering, each one. And when they were done with both the talking and the eating, Sinclair turned on him just a wee bit, lightly admonishing him for breaching confidentiality, and forcefully extracting a promise that Daniel would never do anything like this again.  
  
"The program needs you, Dr. Jackson. The world needs you," he told Daniel. "I'd much prefer to see your association with the Stargate program maintained on the basis of your ethics, rather than see it curtailed as a result of your exercising more compassion and discretionary judgement than the rules allow for."  
  
Sinclair lifted one finger, and they sat there in silence as the staff descended to clear away the dishes. Wine glasses were refilled, and a carafe of coffee and a platter of desserts were deposited on the table. When they'd done and gone, Sinclair leaned back and absently picked at the edge of a piece of pastry for a moment. Daniel thought he was far away, maybe lost in the process of sorting out false hopes from possibly salvageable ones, but then Sinclair abruptly straightened in his chair. "You know, you have a certain reputation here in Washington. You're quite the bone of contention in some circles," he scolded. "During my tenure, I watched you change the rules of our own game, right underneath our noses, several times. I'm sure you're aware there are people who didn't like that – people who don't like that – even despite where there's been positive results. That there are people who want you out."  
  
People wanted him out. Daniel stomach clenched. He wondered if Sinclair intended this – if this was in fact what it sounded like; if he was being given a warning – or if the man was simply talking shop. But then Sinclair raised his wine glass in salute. "Me? I'm not one of them. I don't think we ever could have accomplished some of the things we have if it hadn't been for the way you operate. Today is long overdue, young man. Please accept my congratulations."  
  
Oh. That. Summoning up a faint smile, Daniel tried to be gracious about the congratulations. He nodded and smiled and busied himself with pouring a cup of coffee, all but dying inside. Despite being intended as a compliment, Sinclair's comments cut deep on a personal level, and not only that, they irrevocably confirmed Daniel's interpretation of this whole thing. He was seen by some in Washington as being less than a golden boy, was he? Well, to be honest with himself, he already knew that, had known it for a long time. Hearing it said out loud, though, and from the former President... well, it hurt.  
  
More importantly than shaking up his feelings, though, the statement that some people actively wanted him out pointed toward yet another layer of manipulation and motive in this whole affair. His gut churning, Daniel briefly closed his eyes and peeled it back to take a look. What better way of removing him from where they didn't want him than by sliding him into where they thought the very things they didn't like about him would do them the most good?  
  
"Dr. Jackson?" Sinclair's voice intruded, and Daniel abruptly opened his eyes. Sinclair's gaze was assessing, concentrating attention on Daniel that he didn't want, so Daniel gave him a tight-lipped smile: no worries, nothing wrong here, nope, everything's fine. He stirred his coffee thoroughly, and belatedly realising it was black hastily added some cream to it, feeling his face redden. He wasn't surprised when Sinclair didn't buy his rather incompetent attempt at nonchalance. "You seem upset. I hope I'm not the cause?"  
  
"No, of course not," Daniel assured him. This time when he stirred his coffee, it actually did something. He watched the cream swirl around for a moment, knowing he should let this drop, but he just couldn't. He had to know. "Sir, do you happen to know what's going to happen next, after this farce is done with?" he blurted out. "What they're planning to do with me?"  
  
Sinclair seemed taken aback at the question. "Pardon me?"  
  
Now that he'd asked, said it out loud, Daniel felt more sure of himself. More comfortable with grabbing the truth by the horns and staring it in the eye. "With respect, President Sinclair, thank you for the congratulations but I don't want them. Not for... this. What I would like very much is to know what to expect, so I can start figuring out how to deal with their next step."  
  
"Their next step." Sinclair levelled an authoritative stare at him. "Just what are you insinuating here?"  
  
The look and harsh tone might have intimidated Daniel just a few minutes ago, but it didn't now. Nor was it in any way a convincing denial of awareness of the politics Daniel was referring to. He leaned forward, folding his arms in front of him on the table. "Sir, please. You took a chance on me; you placed your trust in me when you asked me to help you. Well, I'm doing the same with you now. I'd appreciate it if we could speak frankly."  
  
Sinclair snorted derisively, and wiped a hand over his face, suddenly looking older than his years, and profoundly tired. Dispirited, with a faint touch of disgust. "I wasn't taking much of a chance, Dr. Jackson. And it isn't trust that led me to you. It was expediency. You're a far easier mark than any of the others I could have gone to."  
  
Daniel froze in selfish dismay, but then re-interpreted the cynical words, finding a possible alternate meaning. He checked it out gently, softly. "Or maybe it's too hard to show them your pain. To risk being patronised out of pity."  
  
Sinclair covered his eyes with one hand, the other clenched on the tabletop. He sat immobile for long enough that Daniel was beginning to seriously worry, and then pulled his hand away. His eyes were red, his expression one of disbelieving grief that Daniel understood all too well. "I would never have..." he started, faltered, and had to take a sip of wine before he could continue, "O'Neill, George, the President, any of the others. They're military men, and politicians. I would have walked away not really knowing... never really sure..."  
  
What to do with the hoping, Daniel finished it in his mind. Forever unsure, once his wife was dead and buried, whether among the hopes that had been pushed aside there might have been a chance worth chasing. Or if hopes clung to out of uncertainty were, in reality, simply albatrosses. Why did it have to be either / or, though? Daniel felt himself grow tense with sense-memories, his back straightening and the muscles in his arms and thighs tightening as he momentarily relived the complex, painful mix of feelings – hope and desire, defeat and betrayal, wishes and prayers, and ultimately the surety of failure – that had filled him for three long years. He found himself whispering, "Either, or. It shouldn't have to be like that."  
  
Sinclair said, "I'm sorry – What?" His voice was thick.  
  
Daniel just shook his head, never mind. He thought for a moment, picking at his thumbnail, and then, not really sure if he was doing the right thing, offered, "Your wife seems like a lovely person. You mentioned charitable work?"  
  
Sinclair pulled in a deep, ragged breath, composed himself with effort, and gave Daniel a strange, almost mystified look. Daniel winced, not even trying to keep the 'oops' he was feeling inside off his face. So, maybe not the right thing then.  
  
But then again... "Yes. For over twenty years, she's worked with victims of spousal and parental abuse. Mostly with children in underprivileged communities." Sinclair sounded proud of her, and his voice grew stronger as he explained further. "DVSS? Domestic Violence Support Services? Have you heard of it?" Daniel nodded; who hadn't? "Mavis founded that," Sinclair told him. "Started it up from nothing and built it into what it is today, on her own, without any partisan support or special consideration at any point along the way. She was National Director, but still went out into the safe houses and worked directly with the clients, right up until last month."  
  
Okay, so... wow. The DVSS was nation-wide. Huge. From what Daniel knew of it, the organisation had expanded their mandate over the years to extend to helping people in all sorts of difficult circumstances, not just victims of domestic abuse. Most of their work was done in the most dismally underprivileged areas in cities, towns and rural areas all across the country. Thousands of people were helped every year. She'd done that?  
  
"Oh. That's, that's incredible. I've always donated to them. Once a year, every winter... when I've been ali... uhm, when I'm here, I mean, " Daniel heard himself say, and mentally kicked himself. That was hardly fitting recognition of the achievement.  
  
"Look, I appreciate what you're trying to do," Sinclair actually smiled at Daniel, although the smile was a sad one. "And what you've already done for me. You're right; I couldn't go to anyone else because I was afraid. I was afraid they'd pity us. But it wouldn't have done me any good even if I had been able to swallow that fear, anyway."  
  
"They'd tell you they couldn't help, that there wasn't any hope. But they wouldn't explain why they were saying that, and you'd never know if it was because of non-disclosure or because there simply wasn't any help out there to be had."  
  
"Yes. And I need to know. And now I do." Sinclair nodded a thank you to Daniel. "I knew you'd tell me the truth about what's happening out there, and let me draw my own conclusions about whether or not there's anything to hope for. I knew you'd do it, because you have a proven track record of doing what you think is best for others, and damn the torpedoes. It's what endears you to us – to some of us, anyway."  
  
Daniel almost laughed in response to the wry humour that had entered Sinclair's voice with the last statement, but really it wasn't very funny when you thought about it. He wasn't at all the rebel he was being painted as. "That's not actually true," he started to defend himself, but decided not to bother. Sinclair already knew that; he was just toying a bit with Daniel now. Which was all right. "So what are you going to do?" he asked instead.  
  
"I don't know yet." Sinclair finished off the dregs of the wine in his glass. "I'm going to think about what you've told me, and I may or may not pay another visit to Rob Hayes. Ask him to let me take Mavis on a short trip off-world before she... just, before. I've always wanted to go through the Stargate."  
  
Daniel sighed, and bit his lip in concern. "It's up to you. I don't..." He was about to tell him that sort of request just might be too transparent, and even if the President did grant them that special treatment, without someone on the inside looking out for changes in the status quo or new opportunities, there was absolutely no chance of a Tok'ra with a handy healing device, or one needing a host, showing up beside a DHD somewhere. But he didn't, because maybe he was reading too much into it – maybe Sinclair really did just want to give his wife the gift of a visit to another world before she died. Really, it wasn't his place to give any advice here. Sinclair, as former President, knew far more about what might or might not be politically possible than Daniel did.  
  
"There's one more thing I'm going to do, Dr. Jackson." Daniel frowned at the serious tone, and felt like a bug under a microscope as that intense, assessing look appeared on Sinclair's face again. "I'm going to return your favour. I'm going to tell you what little I know about the future planned for you. Which isn't much, frankly. But I hope what little it is helps you."  
  
Oh boy. Here it comes. Daniel fully expected to be told that from now on there'd be far more dubiously mandated committee meetings in his future than there would be trips off-world, and far more diplomatic than archaeological or linguistic tasks on his work schedule. He wasn't disappointed. Okay well yeah, he was massively disappointed, but just not... never mind. It was all true. They were going to turn those very ethics and traits of his that they complained about to their own advantage, and disenfranchise him of the things he believed in and cared most about in the process. God, how could this be happening? Oh, Jack.  
  
"I'm sure they meant it for the best," Sinclair was telling him. "I can see you don't share that view, and I certainly can appreciate your reasons. This is a difficult situation for you. Look, clearly you have some decisions to make. Just... well, try not to throw the baby out with the bath water. Ultimately, in the end, you may have more power than you think."  
  
Daniel was startled out of his thoughts at the mention of his having power. Decisions? What actual plausible decisions and power could possibly be under his control here? "Sure, I can decide to respectfully decline; I can refuse the award and quit the committee. And then what? Find myself in even worse straits," he bitterly observed. "Or I can go along with it, because that's what's best in the long run for the SGC." He really was choiceless, because the good of the SGC had to be his first priority here. The bottom-line for him personally was that he was damned if he did, damned if he didn't.  
  
"And that's really all there is to it for any of us, isn't it?" Sinclair moved his napkin from his lap to the table, dropping it in an untidy heap. "What's best for all, babies and bathwater both? Always remember, doing the right thing has its rewards, Dr. Jackson. I suggest you reap some of them for yourself." He looked at his watch and waved a hand at the table, at the dessert platter. "Are we done here? It's almost three."  
  
What? Reap some... Wait. Three? Daniel hurriedly checked his watch. Yes, just before three o'clock. With a groan, he realised he only had forty-five minutes to get back to the hotel and change his clothes in time to catch his ride to Hammond's office. He hadn't contacted Sam yet; if they'd decided to meet him at the hotel, they'd probably already started back there. He'd just give Sam a quick call now, maybe, and then harass Sinclair with singular resolve until he explained his cryptic comment about reaping rewards for himself. Daniel wasn't in the mood for cryptic.  
  
He pulled his cellphone out of his pocket and waggled it slightly in Sinclair's direction. Okay to use this here? When Sinclair nodded and pulled out his own phone, Daniel turned his cell on, hoping against hope that Sam might have left a message telling him they'd decided not to go back to the hotel early. There were two messages. And yes, there, one of them was from Sam's number. Daniel keyed in the right entries, and listened to the voice-mail playback. He sighed in a mixture of relief and wistful sadness as her voice told him it was two-forty, they were having a great day, wished he could have been there with them, and that they wouldn't be able to get back to the hotel before Daniel had to leave because Teal'c was currently heavily involved with a group of 5th graders at the Textile Museum.  
  
The Textile Museum? Uhm, okay. The other message was from Jack, and when Daniel started the playback and the first thing he heard was his own name spoken in that tone – yes, that one – he knew he was trouble. Apparently he'd been ratted on: Jack knew about what happened at the meeting this morning, about his contribution to the discussion. Well, fine; what did Jack, or anyone, really, expect of him anyway? To just sit there and listen to all that committee mandate and constitution crap with what apparently seemed to be accepted by most everyone else there as being all due obsequiousness? Nevertheless, he winced as Jack's voice told him they'd talk about it later, and he had better have his ass at Hammond's office on time.  
  
Sinclair was rising from his seat, talking on his own cellphone, when Daniel slid the cell back into his pocket. He beckoned to Daniel, and Daniel followed him out of the dining room and through the few short corridors leading back to the lobby cum library cum reception area. Apparently they were leaving. Well, that was all right – he could clarify the mystery advice with Sinclair as soon as the man got off the phone. Barring that, they could discuss it in the car.  
  
Partway to the lobby, Sinclair turned and asked him what time he was being picked up to go to the award ceremony, his finger over the microphone of his cell. When Daniel told him he had to leave the hotel before four o'clock, because he had a meeting beforehand, Sinclair looked surprised, but simply turned back to his phone conversation. They were heading side by side down the staircase toward the entrance by the time Sinclair put his phone away. Just as they got to the bottom, the black car Daniel had been brought in slid smoothly to a stop outside the doors.  
  
"Thank you for coming, Doctor Jackson. Thank you for everything. And remember what I said." Sinclair stuck out his hand, and Daniel shook it, only just then realising that Sinclair wasn't going to be riding with him.  
  
"It was my pleasure. Please give my regards to your wife," Daniel politely told him, because really, if he didn't want to be boorish he didn't have much choice other than to gracefully part ways with Sinclair. Yes, babies and bath water, right things, reaping rewards. He remembered what he'd been told, and was annoyed that it was being left at that. This was his future, damn it, not a word game.  
  
"You might want to think about cancelling your car," Sinclair advised him. "By the time you get back to the hotel, you'll barely have enough time for a change of clothes before you have to head out, and if Peter is going to be dropping you off there anyway, he can wait, if you like, and drive you to wherever you need to go."  
  
Daniel looked around for a second car, peering past Peter's black job, and Sinclair smiled at his confusion. "Oh, I'm not so old and stuffy and convinced of my own importance that I can't drive myself around, Dr. Jackson. My car's parked in the underground lot. Peter's main job these days is to drive Mavis, and take care of whatever else she needs. She was forbidden from driving many months ago."  
  
"Oh. Well, no... I don't want to..." Daniel started to object, but Sinclair stopped him, telling him that it was no trouble; Mavis didn't need Peter, because she was at the clinic for the day. He should think about it, and if he changed his mind just ask Peter to wait for him at the hotel.  
  
He escorted Daniel to the car, and as Daniel climbed in Sinclair quickly reached out and grasped him by the shoulder. Half hunched over, one foot in and one foot out of the car, Daniel twisted around to look at the man. Sinclair's eyes were full, suddenly, and his mouth was twisted in an effort to keep himself together. He looked haunted. Afraid. He just stared at Daniel for a moment, saying nothing, and then with a squeeze to Daniel's shoulder, Sinclair let him go and abruptly turned on his heel and walked off.  
  
He didn't look back, and so it was that last, haunted expression Daniel had seen on Sinclair's face that stayed with him all the way back to the hotel.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
"Jack. Come on in and have a seat." Jack was greeted with a wave toward the chair opposite where Hammond sat behind his desk. "Glad you could make it in early. I hope the last minute change didn't pose a problem."  
  
Jack slid around the door and closed it behind him, glancing up at the clock on the wall of Hammond's office. Three-thirty; he'd made good time. Despite Hammond's polite tidings of gladness, Jack hadn't really any choice; when your C.O. suggests you drop everything and come now, you did just that, and in his new position in Washington Hammond was just as much Jack's C.O. now as he'd been when Jack was under him at the SGC. In any case, Jack was all too glad to be there, and not to have had to be the one to go to the trouble of initiating the phone calls needed for it to happen. "Thank you, Sir. Truth is, though, that you just beat me to the punch. I was hoping you'd be able to free up a bit of time for me before –"  
  
"Yes. Before Dr. Jackson arrives."  
  
Uh, yeah. As he sat down, Jack carefully studied Hammond. Something was up. It wasn't just Hammond's clipped tone when he mentioned Daniel's name that told Jack that; Hammond's entire demeanour seemed to be straddling a line somewhere between sombre and grim. "So, why you called me in early – does it have something to do with Daniel, Sir?" he asked, almost dreading the answer, which was strange considering that the reason he'd wanted to come see Hammond early had everything to do with Daniel.  
  
"You first, Jack," Hammond told him, breaking off eye contact and moving some papers around on his desk to create an empty space in which to rest his forearms. "Tell me: Why did you want to see me alone?"  
  
Just like that. Uh huh, sure. Jack had been rehearsing how to go about this on and off for most of the day. It was a difficult situation, seeing as it was on his urging that Hammond had taken on the role of being the central person in putting this initiative forward. It was going to be a bit difficult to explain. Or... not. Now that he was sitting here with Hammond, all their shared history became a tangible presence rather than just memory, and Jack realised he could trust Hammond enough to just get straight to the bottom line. Just like that.  
  
"Daniel's... being Daniel, Sir. He doesn't see this recognition award in the same way we do. In fact," Jack grimaced slightly as he got right down to it, "Daniel doesn't want to have anything to do with this."  
  
Unexpectedly, Hammond appeared to relax a bit, and simply nodded. No surprised look, none of the anticipated signs of confusion or irritation or concern. The grim demeanour that'd been displayed as Jack had first entered the room was even abating somewhat. Hammond didn't otherwise respond, though, and while the unspoken expectation that Jack was supposed to carry on was clear, Jack wasn't quite sure what else to say now that he'd bypassed the bush-beating in favour of diving straight into the thicket.  
  
Nonplussed, as Hammond continued to stare at him expectantly, Jack started to explain. "Daniel thinks this whole award thing is political manipulation. Thinks all it's about is some advance preparation for the shit hitting the fan when the SGC has to go public. He's convinced his civilian status in the program is being used to plump up the President's thanksgiving turkey." Then to ramble. "You know Daniel, Sir. Always leaping over fences to see what's on the other side. Sometimes he gets so damned caught up in what he finds that he doesn't come back." Then, to dissemble. "I try to stop him, try to keep him in his own yard, but..." He trailed off as soon as he realised what he was doing. Shit. This was wrong, because none of it was Daniel's fault.  
  
Hammond remained silent, stuck his lower lip out a bit, and appeared to be sucking on his tongue. That probably wasn't good. From what Jack recalled, Hammond usually only did that when he thought whoever he was listening to needed only to be given a bit more time and rope before they hung themselves. Sure enough, after another few moments of silence Hammond drummed a finger on the desk and asked Jack, "So you disagree that Dr. Jackson's feelings on this might be warranted?"  
  
No, no he didn't. Of course not. But he did. Sort of. But not really. Maybe. Jack flapped both hands in erratic circles in front of him in lieu of spouting a bunch of equivocal, confused nonsense. Hammond pursed his lips, then, much to Jack's dismay, mentioned the newest bad thing. "Which, if that is the view you ascribe to, would then mean that you'd be inclined to agree with the belief that Dr. Jackson's behaviour of this morning deserves some form of official censure."  
  
Well, it probably had been naive of him to have even hoped Hammond wouldn't have heard about it. If Jack had received the phone call, the shrill ring of complaint arriving in his ear before Daniel's morning meeting had even concluded, it was foolishness to think Hammond would be unaware of Daniel's snitty little performance for very long. He'd hoped to have had a chance to talk to Daniel about it privately, so he could in all honesty tell Hammond and whoever else came bitching to his door that he'd already handled it, before that pounding on the door happened. No such luck, though, and now it looked like he was going to have to approach this with Daniel from a formal perspective, rather than from the softer, more personal one he'd prefer. Hammond seemed to be waiting for an answer, damn it. Jack wasn't ready to give him one, but really had no choice.  
  
Uhh. Okay. "I think that how I feel about how Daniel feels doesn't have anything to do with what I do... about... about what Daniel did because of how he feels." Uhm... "No matter how I feel about why he did what he did, I'll do whatever I feel I have to do."  
  
Wait, did that come out right? Shit. Probably not. Geez, get a grip. He was sounding like Daniel at his most nervous, what with the long vowels and convoluted chatter – never did, could, or would made any sense.  
  
Hammond stiffened. "General? Am I hearing what I think I'm hearing? That an understanding of the factors involved in the behaviour of someone under your command isn't relevant to determining what actions you might take to address such behaviour?"  
  
What? No! That's not what he said, was it? Okay, well, maybe, but it wasn't what he meant, then. He only said it because... because... oh, damn you anyway, Daniel. But Hammond was suddenly tossing a piece of paper across the desk toward him. "Never mind. It's not you I should be berating, Jack, I know that. But unfortunately for you, you're the only one involved who's lower in the chain of command than me. The legitimate targets are all behind brick walls." The paper fluttered down in front of Jack to rest half on and half off the desktop. "Read that, and then let's really talk."  
  
It appeared to be a copy of a memo from the President's office, marked as confidential, top secret, burn this after reading upon pain of death, yadda-yadda... oh. It was an outline of the order of events for the award presentation ceremony, marked as being "revised". Interestingly, it wasn't addressed to Hammond; it was addressed to the Secretary of State. Jack glanced up at Hammond, whose face gave nothing away. Okay, so, just read it. Who was attending, who sat and stood where, who spoke first and at what time and for how long, ditto for who spoke next – there was Hammond's name, there, partway down – and so on... and, wow. There sure was a lot of that 'and so on' going on. With surprise, Jack realised that the program was designed to be far more than just a medal presentation.  
  
He raised his head. "What the hell is this? Suddenly this is the 'Stargate, This is Your Life' show? They're essentially doing a rehash of the history of the SGC here."  
  
Hammond nodded. "Yes, I already knew about that." Well of course he did, Jack realised; he was one of the speakers. "Look down here." Hammond pointed to a notation at the very bottom of the page, and suddenly Jack understood. Bregman. And a camera crew. But then Hammond was pointing again, to something else. "Read on, Jack. It's this part here that isn't on my copy."  
  
Okay, so... and so on, and so on, until the actual presentation of the medal. Which was then to immediately be followed by... what? Jack's head jerked up in surprise to stare at Hammond. He felt his eyes practically begging to jump out of their sockets to run and hide from the words. He looked back down, hoping those words would have somehow miraculously changed during the second or two he'd looked away. They hadn't.  
  
"What the hell? 'Announcement by the President of new designation and re-assignment...' What the goddamn crap is that supposed to mean?" Jack felt himself growing cold as he read the offensive line aloud. But despite having asked, he knew damn well what it meant. It meant Daniel was right. Daniel was one-freaking-hundred percent right, and the rest of them were absolute idiots – him, Hammond, Teal'c, Carter; fools all. They'd been had. Played. Well, Teal'c could probably be forgiven, maybe, because he had warned them several times that they really should discuss this with Daniel before sealing the deal. But they'd wanted to surprise Daniel.  
  
Yeah, well.  
  
He practically spit fire as he read more of the sentence. "I don't believe this: '...to be immediately followed by refreshments in the...' What, they think a nice smoked salmon and cream cheese canapé is going to make this all right?"  
  
Hammond sat silently while Jack fumed over the contents of the memo. Grasping at a straw, Jack had to ask, "This is what I think it is, right? It's referring to Daniel?"  
  
Hammond nodded. "I found that in with some confidential SGC files delivered this morning. Someone wanted me to know there was more coming to Daniel here than recognition for a job well done. More than we anticipated, at any rate."  
  
Jack rubbed a hand across his face, tossing the memo back onto the desk. "Daniel knew. Right from the start, he knew. But he sucked it up and smiled. Spent the last two weeks walking around sucking and smiling, smiling and sucking." Not fully knowing if he was looking to understand Daniel better or looking to somehow absolve himself of his share of the responsibility, Jack earnestly entreated Hammond, "Why? Why would he do that?"  
  
Hammond sat in silence for a time, tapping one finger restlessly against the desktop. Jack knew his question was essentially, underneath the surface, specious, but Hammond seemed to be considering it with all seriousness. "Daniel wants what's best for the program – you know how important he believes the Stargate is, for all mankind. 'Man's most important endeavour', is a fair paraphrase, I think," Hammond finally observed. "And we both know that for all his smarts, he can be quite the victim to his own values. Maybe he just 'sucked it up' because he couldn't come up with a viable alternative, Jack."  
  
A viable alternative. "Well, we have to find one for him." Jack leaned forward, determination borne of anger and resentment uncurling in his gut. "Daniel's not, I repeat, not leaving SG-1 and the SGC, General. Not alive, and maybe not even dead. Not unless and until it's of his own free choice."  
  
"I did some snooping around today." Hammond took the memo and tucked it into a folder on his desk. "Thought I'd try and find out what that 're-assignment' was to. I wasn't able to uncover any specific details about what they'd have him doing, but I do know the assignment is here, within HomeWorld Security. Technically he'll be under my command, no matter the role and designation assigned to him. So we might have a bit of wiggle-room here, if I'm discreet and careful."  
  
Yeah? Well, wiggle-room wasn't good enough. Jack wanted a solution. He wanted to go back in time and never have suggested that Daniel be considered for the damned award in the first place. His second choice, as it was highly unlikely there'd be any co-operative solar flares volunteering for the job anytime soon, was coming up with that viable alternative. Hammond obviously both read the expression on his face and agreed with it, because he nodded slowly, saying, "That'll be option number two. We'll see if we can come up with option number one when Daniel gets here." He glanced at his watch. "Which should be any time now; it's five minutes after four."  
  
They sat in glum silence for a short time, and then Jack realised something which raised his spirits a bit. "Nice to see they've made one miscalculation. If they think doing this right after honouring Daniel with the Medal of Freedom and announcing it in front of a group of twenty-ish bigwigs is going to ensure Daniel meekly keeps his reaction to himself, they're even more stupid than we've been," he gloated.  
  
But then his thoughts flashed back to an underground dining room; to Daniel's dogged determination to ferret out the truth, to his own equally dogged determination to avoid the truth at all costs... to, oh crap, Daniel's reaction to being publicly humiliated by him. Flashed forward again to this present predicament, and to Daniel's behaviour over the last two weeks since he'd been told of this great honour being bestowed on him. Crap, crap.  
  
Hammond dryly observed, "They seem to be relying on us to ensure that doesn't happen. In the phone call I got this morning, along with the complaint about Daniel's contribution to suggestions for defining the committee's terms of reference, " Jack winced; as relayed to him, Daniel's suggestion hadn't been in the least bit politically correct, "I also received explicit instructions to address the issue of his behaviour with both you and him, prior to the award ceremony."  
  
Hammond clasped his hands on the desk, apparently settling down to wait. A faintly smug expression appeared on his face. "And I assure you, I intend to do just that, the moment he arrives."  
  
Which should have been... Jack checked the time. It was close to four-fifteen. For someone who was supposed to have had his ass in the chair right next to Jack at four o'clock on the nose, Daniel wasn't exactly, uh, here. He granted that Daniel might not have checked his messages and received Jack's advice not to keep them waiting, but that shouldn't matter. Daniel knew what time he was expected. Jack sat and gazed around the room, then picked some lint off his dress uniform jacket. Grimaced at Hammond, who was starting to look impatient even though only a few minutes had passed since they stopped talking. A few minutes could last hours, sometimes. Obviously, this was one of those times.  
  
At this rate, they weren't going to have much time at all to come up with that option number one, because they'd have to leave Hammond's office by no later than quarter to five, at the very latest, if they were going to make it on time to where they had to be for the ceremony. Unless...? Jack sat up straight in his chair as the thought that maybe Daniel had decided not to show up suddenly occurred to him. If so, well, it'd be his fault, Jack knew, because he was the one who'd placed that suggestion in Daniel's mind. But surely Daniel would have let him know? Yes. He would have. Wouldn't he?  
  
Jack watched the seconds tick away on the clock, and when they'd added up to one more minute since he started this highly intensive stage of clock-watching, making it four-twenty-one now, he wasn't able to convince himself any longer that Daniel would be walking in that door in the very next tick of the second-hand. Damn it. He'd said that Daniel wasn't leaving SG-1 or the SGC, at least not while still alive... well, if Daniel didn't show up, or didn't call to tell Jack he wasn't going to show up, in the nest five – okay, ten, make it ten – minutes Jack was going to hunt him down and freaking kill him. Hayes could do whatever he wanted with Daniel after that.  
  
"Sir?" He got Hammond's attention. "If things changed this afternoon... if Daniel had... uh, would you be notified right off, or at all, if Daniel had, by any chance, cancelled?"  
  
"Cancelled?" Hammond looked overtly horrified, and then seemed to reconsider his initial reaction to the possibility. "Cancelled... that'd certainly be an interesting development," he murmured. His voice got louder, but sounded just as preoccupied, as he asked Jack, "Do you think he might have decided not to show up? That doesn't sound like something he'd do. I'm not sure I can believe it would even occur to him to do that."  
  
Jack shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "It might," he admitted. "I might have, uh, well, kinda, sort of, suggested it to him. Maybe. Last night. A little." Jack held his thumb and forefinger up close together, indicating just how little, and then feeling guilty about shying away from the real truth gradually moved them farther apart. Much farther apart, as he remembered his exact words to Daniel: "If you feel the whole thing is so demeaning, then don't go. It's that simple."  
  
Hammond put one hand up to his forehead. "Oh, for..." He abruptly slapped that same hand down onto his desk phone. "Call him. Now. Find out where he is and what's going on with him." Before he'd even finished giving Jack that order, he'd lifted the handset and was dialling. As Jack pulled out his cellphone and punched the speed-dial for Daniel's cell, he heard Hammond make contact, asking for someone named Marge. Who apparently came to the phone right away, because Hammond was immediately asking her if there were any changes to the ceremony agenda. Blocking out Hammond's voice for a moment as he heard the initial ring at the other end of his cell interrupted by a gap, Jack swivelled his chair around away from Hammond's desk and shoved the phone harder against his ear. The signal sucked, but if he turned just so...  
  
Damn. If he turned just so, he could hear Daniel's voice-mail telling him Daniel was away from the phone, asking him to leave a message. He did just that – a nice, friendly, familiar, hopefully not equivalent to you're-so-dead-meat, request that Daniel call him back as soon as possible – and then immediately switched to his record of most recent outgoing calls. He'd phoned to the hotel this morning, hoping to catch Daniel before he left; he'd been too late, but the hotel number would be on the list. He found it, hit the dial button, and listened to Hammond re-dialling his desk phone in the background as his cell connected with the hotel. Could they try room 622, please? Waited. It was four-twenty-eight now. No answer. Hit the appropriate number to get back to the switchboard. Main desk; could you please tell me, are there any outgoing messages left by Dr. Jackson, yes, that's right, the gentleman in room 622. General Jack O'Neill; sure, he'd wait. But not very damned long, and only because he had to.  
  
There was nothing. He swivelled back around to face Hammond, and saw that there was nothing from that end either. Hammond shook his head. "Everything's still in place; as far as I can tell, no one has had any contact with Dr. Jackson since they confirmed transportation arrangements with him yesterday afternoon, before the cocktail party."  
  
Okay, Carter and Teal'c, then. Jack hit the speed-dial for Carter this time, and she picked up at the second ring. She sounded chipper, if a bit harried, and immediately started blathering on about something to do with having been delayed in the most fun possible way but not to worry because they'd be there on time even if she had to – He cut her off cold. Had she seen Daniel? Heard from him? No and no, damn it. Was she still at the hotel? Yes, okay, so go pound on the door to his room. Yes, he'd already called there and there was no answer. No, he didn't give a shit that must mean Daniel wasn't in there; just go do it anyway and call him back.  
  
Hammond now had a crinkly little frown creasing his forehead, and the look in his eyes mirrored the unease Jack felt creeping up his spine. It was four-thirty-five; they had to leave in about five minutes. It was quite obvious that he and Hammond had been stood up, but it wasn't like Daniel to do something like that. Jack wasn't sure whether to be more worried than angry, or vice versa, and then simply decided to be a whole hell of a lot of both at the same time. God damn son of a bitch asshole Daniel, where the hell are you and you had damned well better not be lying under smashed car parts in some intersection between the hotel and Hammond's office. Or, between the hotel and... oh, wait. Lunch. At the Club. He leaned forward to Hammond, reminding him, "Sir? Daniel was to have lunch with Ray Sinclair today. One o'clock, I think. Do you have his number?" He knew there hadn't been any car accidents – they'd know if there had been; they'd have heard right away – but maybe Sinclair knew if Daniel had reconsidered showing up to collect his medal.  
  
Hammond stood up and gathered his uniform jacket from within the small oak wardrobe against the wall behind the desk. "I don't have a cellphone number for him," he told Jack. "I only have his home number, but I don't want to use that unless we have to. He's attending the award ceremony; we may as well go on over there and look for him. For all we know, Dr. Jackson is already there, right now."  
  
Carter called back to tell him there'd been no answer at Daniel's door. Did he want her to get the hotel to open the room for them? Jack told her no, not wanting to invade Daniel's privacy like that for no real reason, because it was an even farther stretch to envision Daniel lying on the floor of the room as it was lying under smashed car bits on the road. It felt wrong to leave Hammond's office without Daniel, and as they left and closed the office door behind them Jack had this quick, rather inane mental image of Daniel standing outside that very same door and repeatedly knocking on it, only to never receive an answer. That was stupid, because Hammond had a secretary, and an outer office door, and obviously Daniel wasn't coming here in any case because if he was he would have had his pain in the ass in the chair next to Jack's over a half hour ago.  
  
They traversed the distance between Hammond's office and where they needed to be in a quiet flurry of concerned footsteps, a very short car ride, numerous security stations, and then one last corridor. As they entered the room, both of them immediately looked through the small crowd of people for Daniel, without finding him. Hammond did catch sight of Sinclair, though, and with a tap on Jack's shoulder directed his attention to the man. Decked out in an expensive-looking dark suit with a light blue shirt and red eyes that Jack could see even from over a dozen feet away, Sinclair stood alone against the wall to their left, his wife clearly but not surprisingly, considering how ill Jack knew she really was, not with him even though the invitation had included her. Mavis Sinclair knew about the SGC and Stargate, even though she really shouldn't; technically, in telling her about it while in his presidency, Ray Sinclair had violated the confidentiality of his office. Jack for one was glad of it, because he'd always suspected that a fair portion of the more humane shifts in Sinclair's initial stance on some of their contentious missions might have been courtesy of his wife's influence.  
  
It was two minutes before five, and Sinclair's opening comments were scheduled to begin at five-fifteen. And Daniel was nowhere in sight. Neither were Carter and Teal'c, Jack realised with annoyance as he and Hammond moved toward where Sinclair had now been joined by the current Secretary of State and another man Jack couldn't put a name to. That he'd delayed them further by telling Carter to go to Daniel's room meant nothing to Jack; she and Teal'c should be here already, so he could bitch and rant and vent under his breath to them about Daniel's absence in a vain attempt to deny the cold dread inexorably rising within him.  
  
Something more than just cold feet was responsible for Daniel not being here yet. He didn't know what that could possibly be, but he knew it was the truth all the same.  
  


* * *

 

  
  
Something pulled at him, a faint, deep whoop that vibrated like the blade of a chainsaw cutting into his brain, and then vanished. Gone, to be all but forgotten. Until, discordance: whoop, bzzz, pull. It yanked at him. Seemed familiar, but he couldn't place it. Couldn't respond anyway, even if he knew what it was. Too tired. Weighted down. Sick. Oh, so sick.  
  
He went away. Then returned, not willingly, reluctantly drawn by more whooping. Willed it to stop and leave him alone, because god, he was so very dizzy, so sick... and it did. So he sighed in relief and went away again, thankfully.  
  
More. Again. Whoop, whoop, pulling maddeningly at him. But this time, there was something else too. Something smelled awful. Acrid, sickening. It brought him too far from where he'd been; he couldn't go back. Had to go forward. Struggle forward.  
  
The pungent odour was sharp in Daniel's nose, prompting a tightening of the already excruciatingly tight band of pain around his head. The stench pricked at his eyes, stinging, as he tried to open them. They didn't want to co-operate, staying at way far less than half-mast, and he went to bring his hand to his face to rub at them. And found he couldn't. Didn't know why not; didn't know if he'd in fact even tried, or if the effort had just been in his imagination.  
  
Noise pounded at him suddenly, something very close, grating and angry, and he felt himself being jostled, pushed and pulled this way and that. Felt, through the fog of sickness and uncomprehending shock, something pointy come into contact with some part or other of him. His arm? He tried to pull away, or thought he did – he certainly wanted to badly enough. A sharp wrench sent pain through his shoulder, and this time he knew he moved of his own accord as he tried to escape it.  
  
The noise buffeted him again, "Damn it, knock it off," this time seeming far closer, harshly shoving its way through the muggy blanket wrapped around his brain. Words, it was words, he realised. A voice. Someone was mad at him. Sorry, sorry. His shoulder, it hurt; he didn't mean to do anything wrong.  
  
"There's no point in hurting him," another, quieter, voice said. He'd heard that voice before, hadn't he? Female, chiding... Oma? No. Of course not. Maybe.  
  
There was another sharp pull, a strange ripping noise, and then a push. Then nothing for a moment, except for the persistent nausea and headache. Then, a sudden, "Agh. He drooled all over my hand," followed by a hard shove to his chest that drove Daniel backward and caused his head to bang against something hard. He tried again, without much success, to overcome the feeling of having ten ton weights on his eyelids, realising, as he became more awake and aware by dribs and drabs and pushes and shoves, that something was very wrong here. Wherever here was.  
  
It felt like he was leaning half-sideways against something hard and cold, all jutting edges and sharp angles, and he discovered he was sitting on the ground – an unfinished concrete floor, actually – as he tried moving his legs a bit and felt them to be curled up almost underneath him. They tingled uncomfortably, not wanting to listen when he asked them to move. When he tried placing his hands down on the floor, to push himself away from all the sharp angles, only one responded. The other... the other was... was – Shit! Daniel's brain slammed into full wakefulness with the shocking realisation that he was tightly restrained by his left wrist, tied to... what? Something unyielding.  
  
Understanding of all the little and large cues to his surroundings that he'd only been partly aware of, and mostly unable to make sense of, flooded into sensibility all at once: the intermittent baying of a dog off in the distance; the smell of fresh vomitus, a moment ago overpoweringly strong and close but now fading to mingle with a readily noticeable earthy, almost mouldy odour; the feel of the rough concrete slab under his butt. The pull on his left shoulder from an arm awkwardly, forcefully extended down and away from his body, and the unmistakable feel of the plastic zap strap on his wrist, cutting into his skin as it held him securely to something cold, hard, and thin – a narrow metal bar of some sort? The voices. A man and a woman.  
  
"Hello? Who's there?" He tried, but his jaw felt as heavy as his eyelids, his tongue thick and unwieldy; the words came out sounding slurred and sloggy to him. He tried to clear his throat, but that made him retch. Slurred and sloggy it was, then. "Who are you? Where am I?" There was no answer, save for some footsteps moving away from him.  
  
Something was pinching at the skin on and below his eyelids, pulling as he tried again to open his eyes. Daniel brought his free hand up to his face, clumsily groping past his nose with a trembling hand. He was shivering, he realised, right from the tips of his fingers down to his toes, and tried to stop but couldn't. Maybe it was cold here. Must be cold.  
  
"It's cold," he slurred, not quite sure why he felt the need to share that. "Are you there? Who are you?" No one answered, but he was being watched. He knew it; he could feel it.  
  
He explored his eyes with shaking fingers, and felt a smooth, slick surface. Some kind of plastic tape, maybe, over his eyes? What, had they taped...? Oh god, yes, they'd taped his eyes closed. His hand curled into a fist of its own accord, a fresh spate of fear hitting him like a hammer and driving both his fist and a desperate plea for information punching out into the air in front of his face. "Who are you! Why are you doing this?"  
  
Maddening silence. Daniel clenched the fist to his forehead and concentrated on breathing slowly, smoothly, in and out; don't panic, it's okay, it'll be okay. He told himself to just settle down, that this wasn't the first time he'd been at a disadvantage. He could handle this no problem. It'd be a breeze. A walk in the park. Piece of cake – no, wait, don't go there, not that one. He still felt quite nauseated. Don't think of food.  
  
One thing at a time. Ignore the nausea, and the menacing feeling of being watched. Ignore the twisted, uncomfortable position he was sitting in, the hard something-or-other digging into his lower back, the ache in his restrained arm. First things first. The shivering was bad, coarse and uncontrollable, and it was difficult going as set out to find the edge of the tape over one eye, but then a thin slice of smoothness curled up under one fingertip. He picked at it, and when he'd secured it between two fingers and gently began to peel it off, he nervously quipped, "Don't look now, but I'm coming out."  
  
A faint snort of what he sure hoped was suppressed amusement – that'd be far preferable to scorn – came from somewhere very close, just off to his left. Apprehensive, Daniel swivelled himself as best he could in that direction as he peeled the tape off and finally got an eye open. Late afternoon sunlight spilled in through a partially open door opposite where he sat, sending a spike of pain through his eye. He slammed the eye closed, blinding himself again for just a moment before slowly re-opening it. "Hello," a voice said mildly, as if greeting an old friend, and as his eye adapted to the play of light and shadow of the place he was in and he saw who it was, Daniel's hand froze in front of his face, the piece of surgical tape dangling from his fingers.  
  
She reached forward and took it from him. "I can get the other one for you, if you like," she offered, her tone calm and kindly, and for a bizarre moment Daniel actually thought he was asleep and dreaming this. But he wasn't, and she was leaning forward, reaching toward his other eye with a pasty-white, emaciated hand with long, red-painted fingernails.  
  
He momentarily panicked. "No!" No dream, here. His arm shot out, catching hers across the forearm, and she fell back, letting out a small squeak of shocked surprise. Catching his breath, Daniel shakily told her, "I can do it." And then couldn't, because the shivering was even worse all of a sudden, and he could barely control his arm enough to get his hand back to his face.  
  
Mavis recovered both her position in front of him and her composure, reaching out again and this time he couldn't stop her from touching him – no, don't, don't touch me, but she did – and peeling the tape off his other eyelid. "It's just the drugs," she told him. "I can't remember which one, but a common side effect of one of them is shivering. It'll go away soon. The nausea will go away as well." She wrinkled her nose and waved a hand, gesturing toward their left. Daniel automatically found his eyes following the gesture, even though his brain was still dead set on staring at her in utter disbelief that she was even here, that it was her doing this to him. So, it took him a moment to interpret what he saw when he looked away from her.  
  
His suit jacket, for one thing. Obviously the thing she had been wrinkling her nose at, it was in a heap on the floor in front of a pile of large canvas sacks full of something. He could see the dark stain and the irregular lumps of stuff that didn't belong clinging to one side of the jacket, and realised he must have puked on himself. There were other things. The closest canvas sack had a red-stencilled label on it, with large lettering that he could read even without his glasses. Peat moss. There was the wall behind the bags – windowless, horizontal dark wood slats, vertical interior studs, laden with hanging tools. His gaze followed the studs up to the roofline, and then around, to see that the one-room building had a raised roof with open eaves on three sides. He looked down again at the floor between him and the wall. Where he could see it amidst the litter of empty potting containers and piles of half-rusted thick-linked, long chains, the floor was unfinished concrete.  
  
Well, so there you go; there's always a bright side. At least she hadn't used the honking big fat chains to tie him to the lawn mower. Chains were such a pain. So gauche.  
  
Uh, wait. What? Daniel re-checked his unconscious, now not only entirely conscious but front and centre, perception of his situation. Yes, yes, he was in fact restrained to a fricking lawn mower. A black ride-on job. A garden tractor, actually, not tiny, but not terribly large either. At least, not the heavy-duty garden tractor kind like Jack had. This one had the brand-name "Murray" written on the side of the front cowling, near his head. Hah. Jack had a John-Deere. And did that matter? No, of course not. Except that it might be less of an insult to be tied to the likes of Jack's tractor rather than this piss-ant thing. "Murray" – that's funny, he thought, an image of Teal'c flashing into his head.  
  
Oh, please, what was he thinking? Aware of the edge of faint hysteria lacing his nonsensical thoughts, Daniel shook his head, telling himself to get a grip here. That sort of nonsense wasn't called for. Look, things were getting better already – the shivering seemed to be settling down, and he knew a heck of a lot more about what was going on with each passing moment. Information was power, right?  
  
He was suddenly all too aware of Mavis watching him through those dead eyes of hers, with a patient, benignly friendly look on her face that was so incongruous with the situation it chilled Daniel to the bone. He ignored her as best he could and did more information-gathering, checking out the relevant details of his predicament. He found out that his upper back and left shoulder and elbow were aching so badly because over half the length of his left forearm was pulled down underneath the ride-on, just behind the right-hand front wheel. As he leaned forward further to take a look underneath, to see what he was attached to, he realised that pain in his lower back, or, upper butt, really, was the edge of the mower deck where it jutted out from the side, just behind him. He shuffled forward a bit, toward the wheel, and thankfully that solved most of that problem. There. See? Information, power.  
  
"You can't get free," Mavis told him. "He knows what he's doing." She sounded apologetic, but that same friendly, mildly pleased expression was still on her face.  
  
Daniel glanced at her, and then continued with what he was doing. He forcefully pushed on the wheel, grunting with the effort, and it turned inward at the front a bit further, allowing more room for him to move away from the edge of the mower deck, plus to see better. As he inspected the metal rod he was zap-strapped to, he forced an easy, relaxed tone and remarked, "I'm sure he does. You're fortunate to have someone like him, especially now." The cable tie was one of the black ones rather than the heavy-duty type they used in place of handcuffs, and it strapped his wrist to what appeared to be the steering linkage bar for the front wheel. Which was securely bolted to the axle in the front, and to the steering shaft way over there, way underneath. Damn.  
  
"Yes. Yes, I am." He heard her come closer, and straightened up as far as the way he was restrained would allow for. There wasn't anything more looking under there was going to tell him; he wasn't about to get free unless the strap was cut off his wrist. And it was on so tight, and his position was so awkward, he figured that even if he had a knife or a pair of scissors he'd still have a hard time getting free on his own. It was one of the thinner black ones, though, a light utility strap, so maybe it'd stretch a bit if he really worked at it? He could feel the wetness of blood on his wrist and hand, and realised that the violent shivering he'd experienced had caused his skin to abrade against the metal. That might be helpful too.  
  
"He takes care of me. He's always there when I need him." She'd moved close enough to him now that if he wanted to, he could touch her without even extending his arm. He didn't want to. Last night touching her had felt right, a form of affirmation and recognition of her value, of the value of life. Comforting, sharing. Caring. Daniel still cared, but somehow, now, even the thought of physical contact with her made him want to climb underneath Murray, amid all the metal and grease, and huddle away from those dead, dead, eyes. "He'll be back in soon. He's just around the corner, outside, taking an important telephone call."  
  
"I'll look forward to it," Daniel mumbled under his breath, remembering the angry voice and the feel of rough hands pushing and shoving at him as his soiled jacket was sliced and then stripped off him.  
  
"I realise he must seem harsh to you." She placed a hand on Daniel's knee, as if she really thought her reassurance ought to mean something to him. "He just wants to help me. I'm hoping you'll be willing to help me, too."  
  
"I'd love to help you," he forced a smile. But get your hands off me first, okay? "I'm happy to do whatever I can. If you let me go, we –"  
  
Her eyes blazed with life as she interrupted him, but not the kind of life Daniel wanted to see. "No! Stop right there. What do you think I am?" As quickly as it had come on, her flare of anger softened into quiet determination. "Dr. Jackson, believe it or not, I am not insane. Quite the contrary, in fact. Nor am I stupid, I assure you. Attempts to humour or patronise me go nowhere toward resolving this."  
  
Daniel took a deep, calming breath that didn't nearly do the job he'd wanted it to. For better or for worse, he'd dealt with both slightly off the rails and frankly insane people before, and megalomaniacal monsters, and with normally well-intentioned people so stressed by grief and loss or guilt or whatever else that their grip on right and wrong had slipped, but this – he was floundering here; he didn't know what this was. He had no idea what he was dealing with.  
  
Maybe the best he could do for now was to follow her lead, and hope it didn't take him to places too far off the beaten track. "So what can we do to resolve this, then?"  
  
She looked surprised, as if he'd just been unaccountably obtuse or something. Sitting back on her heels, she raised her eyebrows at him. Her voice held an almost amused tolerance. "Why, die, of course."  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Jack's fingers twitched as he listened to the voice coming out of the desk speakerphone. It wasn't actually the conversation he could hear Sinclair having with the person at the other end of the line that was responsible for the twang in his nerves; it was the discussion he could not hear but could see, via the large pane of glass between this office and the adjoining one, that had him madly looking for a way to vent some of this lovely head of steam he'd built up.  
  
At ten minutes after five o'clock, word had been sent to the President that there might be a teensy-weensy little problem. Ten minutes later, in typical Hayes fashion, the man himself had blown in at full speed ahead, his flotilla of associated very important people and security escorts fluttering around in his wake like rowboats battered by a storm. And now here they were, having taken over the several offices closest to the room where Hayes' hand-picked retinue of camera-ready toadies still sat waiting for a presentation ceremony that Jack sincerely hoped would never happen.  
  
From the looks of it, it was going to happen. That the award recipient wasn't there didn't seem to make a whole hell of a lot of difference, which of course said plenty about just how incredibly stupid Jack had been. All of him, even his teeth, ached for Daniel. He watched the spectacle in the next room, where President Hayes, the Secretary of Defense, and a few other main players gabbled at Martin Bregman and his clipboard of notes. Waited for it... and, yes, okay, there. The final handshake. It was a done deal. They weren't going to give up their "historical documentary" opportunity just because the little shit they chose to manipulate to their own purposes hadn't shown up to go on-camera with them.  
  
No point in keeping tabs on the next-door neighbours anymore. He made eye contact with Carter across the small office just as Sinclair signed off on his conversation and turned off the speakerphone. She shook her head – no joy there. Jack hadn't listened to the telephone call past the initial supposed confirmation that Daniel had been dropped off at the hotel at about three-thirty. Hammond was listening, and Carter was there, taking notes. Besides, no doubt Teal'c would remember the conversation as close to word for word as anyone could get – it involved something possibly being amiss with Daniel, and since Daniel's descension there were times Teal'c's attention to detail in things to do with Daniel went well beyond fastidious.  
  
A head poked in via the open door. "We're on. Please take your places, people," it spouted, and then disappeared. Bodies were filing out of the next door office, and Hammond was just an instant faster than Jack in jumping out to catch the President's attention before he made it past them.  
  
"Mr. President, please? Just a quick moment?" Hammond gestured to the office, and with a mildly annoyed look, Hayes nodded and slipped into the room. Carter jerked slightly and straightened her spine so abruptly that Jack thought someone had just shoved something long and stiff up where it shouldn't go, but then realised that she'd never actually been face to face with a current President – neither Sinclair during his two terms in office, nor Hayes.  
  
"George. Ray." Hayes greeted Hammond and Sinclair with a nod to each. "We only have a minute." His eyes skittered across Carter and paused on Teal'c with obvious interest before moving on to Jack. "General O'Neill. So tell me, where the hell is your boy?"  
  
Jack very nearly snapped at him that apparently Daniel wasn't his boy any longer, and if Hayes really wanted an answer to that question maybe he'd better check his own backyard for clues. He caught himself, and instead sucked up his frustration and channelled it into doing what was best for everyone. The very picture of respect and restrained worry, Jack tried to little-white-lie Hayes into giving him the time and latitude he needed to track Daniel down. "That's what I'd like to find out, Sir. We know Daniel had every intention of being here. From what we can tell so far, the delay isn't of his own making." No way was Jack going to sit on his ass for over an hour being filmed for posterity while they didn't know where Daniel was.  
  
Hayes looked surprised, then shot an irritated glance at the group of men waiting for him out in the hallway. From behind Hayes' back, Jack received a warning look from Hammond. He didn't take it very seriously; Hammond wanted to find Daniel just as much as Jack did. Hayes was frowning now, and Jack crossed his fingers behind his back. He immediately uncrossed them and made a fist, wanting to put it to good use as Hayes said, "I was advised that in all likelihood he'd decided at the last minute to opt out, Jack. I understand he's certainly contrary enough. Are you saying that may not be the case?"  
  
"Whaa –Daniel?" The bleat of disbelief came from Carter, and when she realised what she'd done her face turned bright red.  
  
Hayes turned to her. "Colonel Carter, isn't it?" She squeaked out an affirmative, coming to ultra-attention like her spring had been sprung, and Hayes moved over to stand in front of her and Teal'c. "And you're Teal'c." He stood nose to chin with Teal'c for a moment, then put out one finger, placed it against Teal'c's chest, and shoved. Teal'c slowly lowered his head, his eyes coming to rest on the finger pressed against his chest, and then raised his eyes to meet those of Hayes. "Just testing," Hayes said, and backed off.  
  
When Hayes turned away from Teal'c, Jack saw the barest hint of a smile tickling at Hayes' lips, and knew they had a chance here. Hammond must have caught it too, because he jumped right on in there. "We're quite concerned, Mr. President. We'd like the opportunity to investigate this right away. Time may well be of the essence."  
  
Hayes appeared to ignore him, stroking his chin in thought. When he spoke, it was to Carter. "So, you disagree he's contrary enough to do that? You can relax any time, by the way. Please. Preferably before any bones snap under the tension."  
  
Carter glanced at Jack, a quick cross-check that he silently acknowledged and confirmed, and with an only minor adjustment to her stance, she answered the question. "Daniel would never do that, Sir. Never. Anyone who knows him at all knows that. And respectfully, Sir, Daniel is not contrary. I think there's a big difference between being wilfully contrary and being dedicated to doing the right thing."  
  
Jack sent Carter a quick mental "well done" as Hayes looked at her thoughtfully and then glanced toward the hallway again. The heat was on the flip side of the coin now, and with any luck they'd be leaving with their early dismissal slips firmly in hand any minute.  
  
"All right. Go find him. George, I'd like you and Jack to attend regardless, though." Aw, crap. "We've revised the actual medal presentation portion of the program because of Dr. Jackson's absence, but the rest of it will go forward." Hayes turned to Jack, gesturing at Carter and Teal'c. "I'm sure your people can get the ball rolling in the hour you'll be with us."  
  
Jack had no choice. With another speculative look at Teal'c, Hayes headed out, but then stopped right in the doorway. "Should have had you come last night after all," he said, ostensibly to Teal'c, but probably more to himself, and left.  
  
For crying out loud... Jack cut the thought off. Last night didn't matter. Political games didn't matter. The only thing that really mattered was the Carter-Teal'c portion of the next hour. "Huddle time," Jack called out, beckoning them to him with his fingers. He was startled to find the huddle a bit larger than he'd expected, with both Hammond and Sinclair coming to stand with them in their little circle.  
  
Sinclair smiled grimly. "I'm first on the list. They can't start without me." There was a bit of a smug, rebellious air to him that Jack took note of; it was a good look.  
  
"So, what do we know so far?" Hammond momentarily took over command of Jack's huddle.  
  
"Well, when I left Dr. Jackson this afternoon, it was clear to me he had every intention of being at your office by four o'clock, George."  
  
"And your driver dropped Daniel off at the hotel at about three-thirty," Carter said. She looked at Jack. "He said he took him straight to the underground elevator entrance for the North Tower, Sir."  
  
"We need to check that." Hammond looked apologetically at Sinclair, who simply shrugged.  
  
Jack was very familiar with the hotel. "That's easy enough to do. Carter, the underground lot attendant records license plate numbers and the in and out times for exempt vehicles. Chauffeured cars," he clarified for Teal'c, seeing the confusion over the term. "Parking for non-guest vehicles isn't free, but chauffeured vehicles doing pick-up and drop-off runs don't have to pay."  
  
"From what I have seen, there are many such vehicles arriving and leaving at all times of the day and night. They appear to collect and deposit their clients at the main lobby entrance," Teal'c observed. "Is that not so?"  
  
Usually, yeah. Jack turned to Sinclair. "He specifically said he dropped him down below?"  
  
Carter filled in the missing details. "Yes. He said Daniel was short on time, and it's easier and faster to get to the rooms in the North Tower from the underground elevator, rather than going all the way through the lobby."  
  
A dark-suited lackey appeared at the door. "Mr. Sinclair, Sir? General Hammond, General O'Neill? They're ready to begin." When no one moved, he politely but insistently told them that President Hayes had requested he escort them, without delay.  
  
"We'll get right on it, Sirs, " Carter assured them, and Jack reluctantly followed Sinclair and Hammond out and down the hallway.  
  
They made the short trip in silence, and had only just entered the main room when suddenly Sinclair turned and grabbed Jack's arm. "Wait. I just thought of something... the hired car. Your people should check that out. I suggested after lunch that Dr. Jackson might want to cancel it and have my driver take him to meet you, but he didn't seem interested in doing that."  
  
Well, yeah, that was a given. "I'm sure they'll do that," he assured Sinclair. There was a slight shove to Jack's back, and as he moved forward a few inches in response he heard the door close behind him. Hammond was making his way to his seat. The lackey subtly prodded Sinclair toward the front of the room and Jack in the direction Hammond had taken.  
  
Sinclair resisted the prodding for a moment. "Oh, okay, good." He slowed, then stopped, seeming unsure of what he wanted to say, but then asked Jack, "You're sure they'll check it?"  
  
Jack nodded at him, yeah, of course he was sure, and Sinclair allowed himself to be conveyed to the podium. Jack located the video camera and straightened his uniform. He made absolutely certain that as he purposely walked directly across the path of the camera's view of the front podium, he faced it straight on and mouthed to it just what he thought of this whole thing.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Die?  
  
This was not good. Not good at all.  
  
This wasn't going to happen. No way was he going to die again, at least not here, like this. "Killing me won't resolve anything," he told Mavis, tugging against the restraint on his wrist. Oh god.  
  
A startled, almost appalled expression appeared on her face. "What? No! What ever made you think we want to kill you?"  
  
Uh, well, you did, just a second ago. Make up your mind, for god's sake. Instead of blurting that out in a gush of fear and frustration, Daniel slowly counted to five to himself, feeling like he was the ball in a ping-pong game.  
  
"No, you've mis –" A figure appeared in the doorway, blocking out the sunshine, and she quickly turned around, struggling, against her own excitement, to pull herself to her feet. "Oh, good. Good! You're back. There's been a terrible misunderstanding here." She pointed to Daniel. "He seems to think we want to kill him."  
  
The man entered the building, and Daniel wasn't at all surprised to see who it was. He waited for a beat, and when Peter of the dark-eyed, dark-haired handsome smile just stood there and stared down at him, not responding at all to her, Daniel tried to bolster his nerve with as much feigned nonchalance as he could muster. "So, hello. That must have been quite the elevator ride; I don't even recall stepping inside. I'm pretty sure this isn't the right room, so I'm thinking maybe we should go back and try this again." He thought he did okay, although the persona probably would been more convincing if he hadn't been sitting all twisted around and hunched forward like he was.  
  
Peter reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes.  
  
"Peter? Dr. Jackson doesn't seem to understand why he's here."  
  
He ignored Mavis, taking a cigarette out. He put it between his lips, put the pack away, and started patting down his other pockets.  
  
She didn't seem at all fazed by his apparent disregard of her. "Didn't you explain? I thought you had."  
  
He was still looking for something to light the cigarette with as he finally spoke. It clung to his lower lip and erratically bobbed up and down with each syllable. "No, he didn't give me a chance. He just refused to come, point-blank. I already told you he didn't give me any choice."  
  
What? Daniel heard the theme music for The Twilight Zone start up in earnest. Mavis turned a chiding look onto him. "Ah," she said with a nod of understanding, still speaking to Peter even though she was looking right at Daniel. "That's why you said this was the only way. Because he refused to listen to you. I see." Then she addressed Daniel directly. "That wasn't very nice, Dr. Jackson. You could have at least listened to what Peter had to say. Then you could have avoided all this."  
  
What? So it was his fault he was sitting here tied to a lawn mower? Oh, no, don't think so. What the hell were these people talking about? Daniel turned away from her reproachful gaze, averting his eyes as he searched his mind, trying to remember anything about how this had happened. All he found was an image of the car parked outside the elevator in the underground lot of the hotel, and of himself preparing to climb out as Peter opened his car door for him. Nothing else, until that barking dog woke him, here. Okay, so go back farther, then. Before that... before that... what? Did he talk to the man at all? He didn't recall them having anything to say to one another other than, "Here you go," and "Thanks for the ride."  
  
A faint snick and a flare of light caught his attention. Peter had finally found a lighter. The flame snapped into nothingness as the lighter closed, and with that suddenly came the memory of just the same thing happening in the car on the way to the hotel. Peter lighting a cigarette, his head half-turned and tilted toward the back seat as he snapped the lighter closed and said to Daniel, "Are you sure you don't want me to wait for you? It's a shame to have the other car come out when I'm already right here."  
  
Daniel had told him no; he knew that. He remembered it now, saying no. That he thought it was too late to cancel the other car anyway; it was probably already on the way to the hotel for him. He was clear on th– Yes! All right, okay, that's good, Daniel cheered to himself. Jack would be here any minute, because the other car would have shown up, and when Daniel wasn't there for his ride... wait. What time was it? His head turned of its own accord, following the line of his left arm where it disappeared underneath the front of the tractor. He could feel that his watch wasn't on his left wrist anymore, though, and, duh, he couldn't have read it even if it still had been there.  
  
He looked up to find Mavis bending over him, supporting herself with one arm against the engine cowling, her face just inches from his own. "Dr. Jackson? What's wrong? Are you feeling sick again?"  
  
What's wrong? What's – God, was she kidding? He'd been drugged and kidnapped and tied to a lawn mower named Murray by people who apparently didn't want to kill him but definitely wanted him to die, that's what was wrong. He almost laughed out loud, and was glad he didn't because it sounded scared and semi-hysterical enough just in his head. A noise like that ought never be uttered. Instead, he choked out, "I'm fine. Wonderful. Everything's perfect. What time is it?"  
  
Peter stepped up. "Time to get this show on the road; that's what time it is."  
  
Daniel's gut churned, and he yanked his left hand ineffectually. "Wait, wait, wait, wait," he heard coming out of his mouth as Peter moved forward and loomed over him. Okay, wait... but, wait for what? Why, for Jack to get here, of course; but he didn't think that was going to convince them to hold off on whatever they had planned. "Uhm..." He licked his lips, and tried turning his hand to twist the zap strap. Ouch. "Look, uhm, maybe if you just tell me what it is you want..."  
  
"Well of course," Mavis smiled at him. "We'll have to, for it to work, won't we."  
  
We will? Okay, sure, why not. As long as it meant holding off on the killing-dying stuff, Daniel was willing to go with whatever she said, even if he had no idea what she was talking about. He put on an interested face, raising his eyebrows and tipping his head. All ears. Go for it; explain away.  
  
Mavis looked over at Peter. "You can cut him free now."  
  
Oh, yes, yes, that'd be good. "No, I don't think so," Peter said, though, crouching down in front of Daniel. He took a long drag off his cigarette, and repeated it. "No. No way." Damn.  
  
Mavis looked surprised, then frowned and starting chewing on her lower lip. Her composure was slipping, Daniel suddenly realised. He hadn't noticed that up until now – but then again, he'd been pretty self-involved to this point, really. She brought a hand up to her neck, and he saw it was shaking. "Peter, this, you... this was never part of the plan. We just need to explain to him what we need. To trust him. It'll be fine."  
  
Peter went up fast, flicking the cigarette off to parts unknown as he shot up from his crouch to stand right in front of her. He gripped both her shoulders, bending over to be face to face with her. "No. No, it won't be fine. You need to trust me. I'm the one you need to trust, not him. He never would have come, Mavis. He never would have come, and there'd be no hope at all. And we can't let him loose..." He paused, looked down at Daniel, and his tone changed, hardened, from the quietly urgent one he used with her. "You don't understand. He's dangerous, Mavis. You don't know the whole truth about him. What he really is, the things he's done."  
  
Oh. Daniel closed his eyes for a second and slowly nodded. When he opened his eyes and looked directly up at them, it was to see that Mavis was close to tears. The hands which had been on her shoulders hovered uncertainly in front of her face for a moment, and then Peter dropped his arms to hang limply at his sides. He didn't seem to know quite what to do with her, and Daniel filed that interesting bit of information away as being possibly useful for later. There was something else that seemed a whole lot more important to deal with right now. He carefully kept his tone soft and unassuming as he asked the question of the moment. "And just who and what are you really, Peter?"  
  
"I didn't hear anyone invite you into this conversation." Peter pulled away from Mavis, warning Daniel with an extended finger and shake of his head, "Butt out. Just... be quiet."  
  
No, he wouldn't be quiet. It was to Mavis that Daniel spoke this time, though. He wasn't sure how much she'd been privy to during her husband's tenure, so he started with the basics, speaking rapidly to get as much out as possible before Peter decided to try making him shut up. "You know about the SGC, about the Stargate, right? Obviously you do. The SGC is under military control, always has been. Well, there's this other organisation, ostensibly also under military control..."  
  
Daniel knew he was in fact on the right track when Peter kicked him in the hip. He grunted a few times with the pain, his free hand pressed over the point of impact, and waited for his teeth to ungrit themselves so he could have another go at it. Peter stepped on his foot suddenly, tripping over it, and Daniel realised Mavis had pushed him away from her. Words were being exchanged, hers confused and angry, his steadfast and placating. Daniel couldn't tell who was winning.  
  
He cleared his throat and spoke as loudly and clearly as he could. "It's called the NID," he said overtop of their voices. "A faction of the NID didn't agree with the way the SGC was being run. They wanted control of it for themselves." He paused, waiting to see what impact his words might be having, because for all Daniel knew she was already aware of the NID and of what he wanted to tell her.  
  
She wasn't, though. "What are you saying?" Her voice was a confused whisper.  
  
"They used violence and coercion to try to subvert the program and gain control. Threats, kidnapping, theft, murder. They had covert operatives everywhere."  
  
Mavis looked from him to Peter, and Daniel saw exactly when the penny dropped. Peter saw it too and turned on Daniel with a raised fist, bending over to hiss at him, " I thought I told you to butt out."  
  
Daniel ducked his head and covered up as best he could with only one arm free, but the expected blow never came. He snuck a peek out from under his arm, and when he saw that the coast was apparently clear he raised his head the rest of the way. Peter had turned away to face the back wall, standing silently with both hands raised to cup his forehead. Mavis was leaning up against the front of the tractor, her eyes closed. Daniel now had the answer to that important question, but damned if he knew what to do with it just yet.  
  
He did nothing for the moment. The look of painful concentration on Mavis' face was impressive, and Daniel sensed that trying to talk to her right now might backfire spectacularly. He twisted his forearm, but the strap did nothing more than dig into his wrist, and a lancing pain ran from his elbow up to his shoulder. He really had to get unattached here and stretch a few limbs and muscles. His back was killing him. He turned his head to crack a kink out of his neck, and practically swallowed his tongue in surprise as out of the corner of his eye he caught a flicker of movement outside, off to one side of the doorway.  
  
Was it Jack? Oh god, he sure hoped so. The movement didn't re-appear, and Daniel sat stock-still, not taking his eyes off the area. Even when Mavis finally spoke. Her voice was stronger, almost forceful, as she asked Peter, "You were spying on him. For how long? Since the very start?"  
  
"It doesn't matter. It's not important now," Peter said to the wall.  
  
"Maybe not to you." Ray Sinclair stepped out from behind the outside wall, into the centre of the doorway, and then positively steamed into the building. He made a beeline for Daniel and crouched down beside him, grabbing hold of Daniel's left arm and giving it an experimental pull. It hurt. Sinclair's angry voice boomed in his ear. "Oh for god's sake. What the hell do you think you're doing here?"  
  
For a disjointed second Daniel actually thought Sinclair was talking to him. He was just about to say, oh just sittin' around, but fortunately both Peter and Mavis were more on the ball than he was. Mavis was there, latching on to Sinclair's arm, in a flat second. "He can help me, Ray," she blurted out, "But he wouldn't come. Remember he said he was leaving right after? And then he was with you today, and there wasn't any more time. There wasn't any choice."  
  
Peter was talking, too. "I have contacts, Ray. I'm sorry, but I do. They told me stuff." He came closer, his tone persuasive. "Believe me, he can help. He's probably the only one who can."  
  
Sinclair reared up, yelling, his face florid. "No! Not like this, no. What's the matter with you two? Are you crazy?"  
  
Daniel watched the bizarre interplay going on above him, fascinated in a disconnected sort of way. Mavis reeled back, her hand clamped to her mouth, and, as abruptly as if an electrical switch had been thrown, Sinclair just shut off, his face going from a bright angry red to pasty white as he stood there with his mouth hanging open. Then Mavis backed a few steps away, one hand held out in front of as if to ward off what her husband had just said. "No, no, not crazy," she moaned.  
  
Daniel had his doubts, but didn't think it'd be very wise to voice them.  
  
Sinclair came back to life, enveloping her in his arms, gently reassuring her, "No, I'm so sorry. I was angry. I was just angry, that's all. Of course you're not crazy." He took her face in his hands, tipping her head up so he could look her in the eye. "Listen to me, are you listening?" She nodded, and Daniel suddenly thought maybe he was beginning to understand as Sinclair told his wife, "They called me this afternoon. With the MRI results. The one in your brain hasn't grown at all, Mavis. It hasn't changed."  
  
Peter breathed a quiet, "Oh thank you," as Mavis buried her head in her husband's chest. He then placed on hand on Sinclair's arm and simply, calmly, clearly, said, "Ray, please, believe me."  
  
Sinclair looked at him for a long moment, and then down at Daniel. "You okay?" Daniel just nodded, and then, in an afterthought, feeling guilty about it even as he did it, he wiggled his arm a bit. Sinclair didn't seem to catch that, though, looking back up at Peter. His tone was just as direct as Peter's had been. "Answer the question, Pete. How long?"  
  
Peter dragged a hand through his hair. "A long time."  
  
"But you stayed on with us. Quit, and became a private employee, after. Why?"  
  
Mavis raised her head, clearly interested in the answer. Daniel just wanted to be let loose. Peter didn't answer the question, though, and after a moment of booming silence, Sinclair told Peter, "Release Dr. Jackson. Now. And as soon as that's done, I want you out. Pack up your stuff and leave."  
  
Daniel could have sobbed with relief, except that Mavis straightened, leaving the cocoon of her husband's arms, and moved away from him. She looked worried, and confused, Daniel thought. And there was something else there, too... impatience? Peter took one look at her and simply said, "No, Ray. Not until this is done with."  
  
Sinclair's jaw dropped. "What do you mean, 'no'? I suggest you think again." Then the rest of what Peter had just said appeared to sink in, and Sinclair's eyes narrowed, his whole face tightening with cautious suspicion. "Not until what's done with? Just what, exactly, are you talking about?"  
  
Mavis sounded irritated. "What we already said, Ray. He can help me."  
  
"No, honey, he can't." Sinclair looked distinctly uncomfortable as he admitted to her, "Mavis, I'm sorry I didn't tell you, but I've already looked into trying to get some sort of medical help through the SGC. Through some form of technology, or our allies. I'm convinced here's nothing the SGC can do, at least not right now. I can go talk to Rob again, though; we can ask –"  
  
Mavis was shaking her head, a vehement no. Sinclair stopped, and Daniel could see that just as Peter hadn't known quite what to do with her, neither did her husband. Despite that Peter had yet to hand him an engraved invitation, Daniel figured he had just as much business being a part of this discussion as anyone else, so he butted in and asked, "Uhm, okay... so, just for information's sake here, what is it you expect me to do?"  
  
Her voice was laced with the same vaguely amused tolerance she'd used with him before. "Never kid a kidder, Dr. Jackson. You really expect us to believe you don't know what we're referring to?"  
  
"Well I don't, Mavis," Sinclair told her. "So maybe you could fill me in. Just what is it you want from him?"  
  
Daniel strongly suspected Sinclair's claim of ignorance originated more from longstanding practice with political deniability than it did an honest desire for clarification. Mavis must have thought so too, and she must have been holding back a lot of anger, because she suddenly let it out in a scathing spate of words. "Oh, please, Ray. Don't play those games with me. You were President; you were in charge." She pointed at Daniel. "You know exactly what he is, what he can do. He can give me what your career took away – he can give me my life back."  
  
Sinclair looked like he'd just been pole-axed. "What my... what..."  
  
"Yes, Ray. My life! The one your ambition took from me. I want my life back!" Her voice trembled from the effort of supporting her anger. She wasn't strong enough to do this, and Daniel could see she was aware of it and that her own frailty made her even angrier. She took a deep breath and carried on in a more moderate tone of voice, conserving her energy. "My god, Ray. How could you not know this? How could you not see it? I gave up everything for you."  
  
Peter sank down to sit cross-legged on the floor next to Daniel. "This might take a while," he said, and unbuttoned his jacket, making himself comfortable. For all the flippancy Peter had put into the comment, it was pretty clear he wasn't very happy about the conversation that was taking place. Daniel caught a glimpse of a holstered gun resting against the man's left side, under the jacket, and set himself a brand new goal for today: keep this man from getting any more unhappy than he already was.  
  
Sinclair just stood there, obviously completely at a loss. Mavis stared at him, and started to say something only to bite it back at the last minute. Daniel could see she was mentally willing him to get it, to understand, and the longer he just stood there shaking his head and frowning at her, the more her face clouded over with disappointment. She started to cry, putting one hand to her mouth to help hold it in as her eyes filled and then overflowed. Sinclair reached out for her and squawked a small distressed noise of his own, but it was essentially a denial of culpability, and she turned away from him.  
  
Peter cleared his throat, and softly said Sinclair's name. When Sinclair looked over toward them, Peter told him, equally as softly, "All she ever wanted to do was dance, Ray."  
  
It must have meant something, must have some very special significance, because after an initial second or two during which Sinclair looked utterly blank, Daniel saw some sort of terrible reality hit home. His face draining of all colour, his body stiffening as if he'd been hit by an electric jolt, Sinclair abruptly tipped his head back and brought both hands up to cover his eyes. He just stood there like that, rocking slightly. His chest spasmed irregularly, and Daniel realised he was working hard to hold back his own tears.  
  
Why did some people, men especially, do that, Daniel wondered? This man's wife was dying, there was little to no hope, there was obviously a lot of unfinished and very painful business between them, and yet he couldn't allow himself to cry for her? For himself? But then Daniel remembered his own reluctance to cry for Sha're in front of anyone, even when it was just Jack there with him, and thought maybe it was a matter of the stronger the pain, the greater the urge to keep it private.  
  
Peter glanced at Daniel. "She was a dance student when they first met." He turned away again, and Daniel wondered if that was all he was going to get. Decided that was all he wanted, actually, but then Peter decided to explain it further. "Future president's wives aren't dancers. They're apple-pie making mothers, or they're lawyers or doctors, or they're philanthropists. But they can't be dancers."  
  
Daniel felt something tighten in his chest. "I'm Mavis," she'd said, staring out the window, after Jack had called her ma'am. "I'm Mavis," and he suddenly understood just what she'd been facing down out that window, and no, it hadn't been the scenery. With a rush of vertigo, his own voice came to him in a flash of memory abruptly recovered – a memory that until this moment had remained lost to him. Oma. The gateroom. He was dying. "Actually, I'm not entirely sure what the point of my journey so far has been. I mean, if this is about being honest with yourself, I believe my entire life has been a failure."  
  
He understood. He finally understood in full, on a visceral level that he'd unknowingly been detached from until this very moment, why he had gone with Oma. And he understood and completely empathised with what drove Mavis, and why she had brought him here. She was misled, yes, but she didn't know that. And wasn't that just one more parallel between them? Daniel looked over at her, and he understood, and he wanted to cry because he knew he couldn't help her.  
  
"I've seen her dance." Peter leaned over, closing the short distance between them to come almost intimately face to face with Daniel. "I bet the Ascended dance," he whispered, and the overly relaxed, falsely confident tone of voice Peter used felt more menacing than what Daniel imagined it would have felt like if Peter had just taken the gun out and stuck it in his face.  
  
Fear fluttered in his stomach. "Yeah? So, where have you seen her dance?" he asked, hoping only to use whatever seemed to be the current conversation of Peter's choice to gain a foothold on his goal for the day – just keep this guy happy. Short of dying for that end, of course.  
  
Peter eyed him speculatively. "What's it to you?"  
  
Uhh... okay. Daniel glanced at Peter and then looked away when he was unable to gauge just what was behind the challenge. Uhm... I like dancers? Rita Moreno? Nope. He had nothing.  
  
He looked over to Sinclair hoping for some help, or at least a fortuitous interruption maybe, but Sinclair had moved over to beside the door, all the way across the room. He was sitting on a low stack of boxes, head in his hands. Mavis, on the floor with her back against the side wall, sat in a pose that closely mirrored that of her husband. Diagonal bookends, supporting a wide open space of sorrow and misunderstanding.  
  
"I know all about you. All about being ascended, and what that is."  
  
This time Daniel looked at Peter and didn't flinch away. Some goals just weren't mean to be – not at the expense of the truth. "Then you know there's nothing I can do, no matter how much I want to."  
  
Suddenly there was a hand fisted in his shirt, and Peter's face was so close to his own that Daniel could feel his breath on his face as Peter snarled, "Oh, please. No matter how much you want to? You people and your false honour. See that lady over there," he jerked on Daniel's shirt, pulling him off balance, and with his other hand shoved him, twisting him around to face toward where Mavis sat. "She's a good person. They told me all about you, all about you and your pals at the SGC. You're more than happy to let good people like that die, even when you can save them, just so long as you get to keep playing with your big round toy the way you want to."  
  
Right. This guy was NID, or, at least, had been NID, before the rebel faction of the NID was flushed out and the organisation effectively disbanded. Peter had just spouted what Daniel knew to be the official recruit-the-rank-and-file party line of that old faction, allowing Daniel to place Peter firmly amid the marginally to slightly partially-informed cluster of said rank and file recruits. It was pretty clear now. Peter had basically been a watcher, keeping an eye and an ear on the President, a convenient johnny-on-the-spot for the NID because of his position as part of Sinclair's security retinue.  
  
Daniel nodded slowly to himself, understanding a little better why Peter was doing this. Or, part of why, at least. But a few things just didn't track right. If Peter knew about his ascension and descension, then why was Peter was so convinced that he could help Mavis? And given Peter's probable marginal status within the NID, Daniel wasn't sure how Peter would even know about the Ascended in the first place.  
  
His thoughts were interrupted by Sinclair's voice, coming from way over by the door. "Let him go, Peter."  
  
Surprisingly, Peter did just that without any further prompting, giving Daniel a little extra shove back against the mower as he let go of Daniel's shirt and held his hands up, fingers splayed open in a "There, see? I let go" gesture. He didn't move away, though, and Daniel was very conscious of the continued proximity of those hands, and that gun.  
  
"No, I meant, let him go." Sinclair stood, and walked toward them. "Free his arm. This whole stupid fiasco ends now."  
  
"Stupid fiasco?" Mavis stared at her husband in disbelief from where she sat on the floor. "Is that what you call giving me a chance to live? Stupid?" She pushed herself to her knees, and then used the nearest wall stud to pull herself to her feet. Her voice shook. "Oh sure, Ray, sure. If that's how you feel, I can see just how hard you must have 'looked into it'... I bet the lunches were good, though."  
  
"No! That's not what I meant." Sinclair looked flabbergasted. "That's not true. That's not how I feel. God, Mavis. I tried, I did!"  
  
As Sinclair promptly altered his trajectory and went over to her, Daniel's first thought was that, oh, he'd been so close, and yet so far. His second thought was that he'd just been a jerk to dismiss their pain like that, no matter his need to get out of here. But then again, as much as he had compassion for them, their problems really weren't his; she'd had no business doing this to him.  
  
On the other hand, from an analytical perspective Daniel understood why she had. She felt her life had been taken from her, her dreams and needs subsumed under those of someone else, and she'd been biding her time all these long years waiting for the day when she could have it back. Her mortality had thwarted her when she was right at the cusp of doing just that, and Daniel could appreciate just how bitter and resentful she must feel. He could see how, under the influence of such strong, destructive emotions, good people might be capable of doing some bad, completely uncharacteristic things.  
  
Speaking of which, taking that principle in reverse... "So, you heard the man," Daniel told Peter, yanking against the restraint on his wrist to illustrate his point. He didn't even get so much as a glance in response, though, never mind the cuff on the head he'd half expected.  
  
Sinclair was trying to convince her, and he turned to Daniel for support. "Tell her. Tell her what we talked about. Tell her what you told me, that there's no available technology to use, and the Tok'ra are –"  
  
"Tok'ra?" Mavis seemed almost offended in her anger. "The Tok'ra? The Tok'ra are at war, aren't they, Ray? They take their hosts to war. Is that what you wanted for me?"  
  
With Sinclair's confused denials to his wife ringing in the background, Peter leaned over to Daniel, all casually, entirely falsely conspiratorial. "Yeah; I bet the Tok'ra don't dance. Not like your kind, Doc."  
  
No, Daniel didn't think the Tok'ra did much dancing. Wasn't in their nature. And he wished Peter wouldn't call him "Doc" like that, especially in that tone of voice. He wasn't in the least bit interested in the feigned familiarity, considering the attitude toward him it represented. Annoyed, he looked Peter in the eye and rashly returned the earlier challenge. "What's it to you, Pete?"  
  
Peter's entire body stiffened momentarily, and something passed over his face, twisting his features with what looked to Daniel like it might be pain. Then it was gone, and Peter was pushing away from Daniel, standing up. "That's it. We need to get on with this," he said, projecting his voice over to the Sinclairs, but Daniel thought Peter was probably referring more to himself than anyone. "We need to get it over with."  
  
Daniel considered the thing he'd just seen, the... ripple, was the only way Daniel could think of characterising it... of pain and, possibly, grief that he'd seen go through Peter. So. Just swell. Apparently, if he was reading this right, Peter had two motives, each complimentary to the other and both probably quite dangerous for Daniel. The combination of his NID-bred disrespect and resentment of Daniel as a key part of the SGC and the possibility there might be more than just employee loyalty at work here wasn't a happy one. It amounted to Peter being well motivated. And Peter thought Daniel's experience with ascension was an out for Mavis. And Peter was the one with the gun.  
  
Sinclair still didn't quite get it. "Get what over with? I told you, I already looked into it. There's nothing he can do."  
  
Mavis grabbed her husband's arm. "God, Ray. Don't play at obtuse. You know damned well we're not talking about him lobbying for me, or trying to locate the Tok'ra." Sinclair did what Daniel thought was a pretty inept emulation of Daniel's fish-gulpy thing, and it finally got through to Mavis that her husband really, genuinely didn't understand.  
  
"Oh, you... oh. You really don't, do you?" Her whole demeanour changed, the light of hope burning more brightly as she moved from embittered hostility to earnest entreaty. "We're talking about what he can do to save my life right here, right now, in this room. He can do it, Ray. You have to know that; you were President when he did it before. Think, Ray. Remember. Remember what he really is."  
  
"What he really is..." Sinclair repeated it slowly, looking at Daniel, and as the light dawned in Sinclair's eyes Daniel gave a sigh of relief. There was still Peter in the not-happy place to worry about, of course, but at least Daniel wouldn't be alone in trying to convince them that they were barking up the wrong tree here.  
  
Mavis apparently also took Sinclair's slow repetition to mean he was considering the truth of what she was saying, but it was immediately also apparent that she was ascribing an entirely different meaning to it than Daniel was. "Yes. Exactly, Ray." She clutched at her husband. "He's already done it. He died and ascended. And we know that Ascended people help other people ascend. He can help me." She smiled then, a deathly rictus of hope and eager anticipation that stabbed at Daniel's heart, because he knew it was false. He very well might die here because of that very hope and anticipation, and that thought combined with the musky, faintly smoky odour of the place to turn his stomach.  
  
"What?" Sinclair's jaw was hanging open. From the expression on his face, he was hoping he hadn't heard that right.  
  
"You know it's true, Ray." Peter was matter-of-fact, looking down at Daniel as he contributed his pearls of wisdom. "I still have some contacts. I asked about getting some help, and they showed me some stuff from some of the files about him. I read it myself."  
  
"He already ascended – don't you see, Ray? When you ascend, you die, but you get a new life. He knows how; he can help me ascend." Mavis was in full flow, really quite invested in explaining it. "I'll die, but that's all right, because that's going to happen soon anyway. This way, I get a new life. Like he did."  
  
Uhh, what? Oh, geez. Their impressions about ascension were so screwed up. Her earlier comments made a bizarre sort of sense now, though, taken in context with what she seemed to believe about him. The resolution was in dying, she'd said, and now he understood that she'd been referring only to herself. That was an improvement over him dying too, of course, but really the distinction was rather moot, considering that... that, well, that all this was so, so, so screwed up.  
  
"What? No. Oh, no. He can't, he can't." Sinclair's eyes were bugging out in disbelief. "My god, is that what this is all about? He can't do that. Mavis, he's not ascended anymore. He'd have to die, and re-ascend first. You have it all wrong. Just who have you been talking to, Peter?"  
  
At that, even though Sinclair's voice was already so strangled that it was difficult to understand him, Daniel wanted to figuratively reach out and choke him. Maybe even do it literally, and thoroughly so, except for being attached to this lawn mower. Sinclair had hired Peter, an ex-secret service security man, to be his wife's driver and guardian; Sinclair had to know Peter carried a gun, for Christ sake. Oh, god. Read my lips: g-u-n.  
  
Sure enough, out it came. Small, black, and deadly. Peter trained it on Daniel, and when Daniel automatically slid back in an instinctive but wholly ineffective effort to put some distance between him and that thing, Peter warned him, "Don't move."  
  
Daniel thought that was kind of silly, actually, because he was still tied to the lawn mower. What kind of risk is a man who's tied to a lawn mower? Or, was Peter that bad of a shot? This whole thing was starting to seriously test his sanity. And then Peter waved the gun at him, and said, "Do it. Do it now. Ascend her," and Daniel actually looked around the room for the little white bunny. He thought he could smell something burning. Probably his last sane brain cell.  
  
Or maybe it was Sinclair's brain finally frying; he was standing there totally stunned. Too much in one day, obviously. Daniel kind of resented that because it was him, after all, who was at gunpoint here, and he could really use some timely assistance. "Look, I don't know what you've been told, or what exactly you read, but –"  
  
Peter crouched down in front of him. "You know, I don't really have any preference one way or the other. So which is it? Dead, or alive, to make it happen?"  
  
Sinclair interrupted, and Daniel could have cheered, except for the dull, almost lifeless quality of Sinclair's voice. It wasn't exactly a tone of voice that commanded respect and obedience, that was for sure. "The information you were given is wrong, Peter. This is a lost cause. Just put –"  
  
"Ray?" All of them, to a man, fastened their attention on Mavis upon hearing the alarm in her voice. She pointed toward the wall beyond the front of the tractor. "Ray, look... there's smoke..."  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Dodging around Bregman for the third time in as many minutes, Jack sidled and wound his way to the door, catching Hammond's eye on the way out. They met in the hallway, and instead of following the crowd toward the refreshments area headed off to where they had left Carter and Teal'c.  
  
"That should have been predictable," Hammond commented under his breath as they went, and Jack had to agree. That they hadn't anticipated just what changes had been made due to Daniel's absence was their own fault. Jack was still seething over the way they'd tried to use him. The only saving grace was that they'd dumped making Daniel's re-assignment to Washington public. He held the marching papers in his hand, though, along with the walnut presentation case containing Daniel's Medal of Freedom.  
  
"General! Uh, Generals..." Oh for crying out loud. Bregman. Jack groaned aloud as Hammond apparently couldn't bring himself to be so impolite as to ignore the man, slowing, then stopping and turning around to let Bregman catch up.  
  
Bregman scurried up the hall toward them, talking non-stop. "Please wait... oh good you are waiting, okay, good. That's very good. I just need you to... I'm arranging some..." He fussed with his papers as he came to a halt beside them, juggling them and a pen as he pulled a small notepad out of his breast pocket. "Ah, here we go. I didn't expect you to be leaving so early. I'm glad I caught you. When would... this evening? We're already all set up. Would this evening be good for you? Both of you."  
  
"You mean together?" Jack was pissed, and he took it out on Bregman. "Sorry, I'm not in the mood, and I don't do threesomes. Bregman, just what the hell do you want?"  
  
Bregman looked confused. "To set up a session? It was in the memo..."  
  
Hammond must get better memos than Jack, because he nodded in belated remembrance. "Ah, yes. So it was." Jack didn't get that memo. Jack never got all his memos, it seemed. Which was probably a good thing, all things considered. But then Hammond added, "Yes, well, there appears to have been an oversight – we only just saw that memo this afternoon, Mr. Bregman. I'm afraid this evening isn't any good, as General O'Neill and I have made other plans."  
  
Ah; that memo. So, someone hadn't wanted General Hammond, and Jack himself, to know in advance that Bregman would even be here, never mind that he'd be wanted to set up individual filming sessions. Jack listened to Bregman sputter on about how he'd already interviewed the other people he was interested in earlier in the day, and he really needed to wrap this up tonight because that was part of the terms of his contract, and just where was Dr. Jackson because it really was too bad he couldn't have been here for this, such an honour, and it sure would be nice if he could arrange a session with him too. It was important, no, it was essential, to get a session with Dr. Jackson.  
  
"We'll be sure to tell Dr. Jackson you asked, Mr. Bregman, when we see him." Hammond was slowly edging away, thank goodness, and Jack hastened the act by patting Bregman on the arm and then rapidly turning and walking away, hoping that Hammond would do the same.  
  
"Wh... okay, well, I can stretch the contract a bit, I guess. He has my number," Bregman's voice was from behind and was fading, which meant he wasn't following them up the hall. That was good. "Tell him... He can call me anytime. Or, I can call him..." The voice got a bit louder as Bregman tried to compensate for the increasing distance between them. "I'd really like to get his reaction to being given the award, on tape, for an insert..."  
  
Jack stopped dead. Yes. Yes, Bregman was quite right. It was important – maybe even essential – that Bregman arrange a session with Dr. Jackson. And with himself, as well. A threesome. He about-faced and went back to Bregman. "He has your number?" Bregman nodded. "Well, I don't." He put out his hand, and had to wait for a moment as Bregman interpreted and acted on that. The business card he gave Jack had sweaty fingerprints on it.  
  
Hammond raised an eyebrow at him as they turned the corner and walked over to the office they'd used earlier. "It won't do any good, you know, Jack. Anything not approved won't just end up on an editing room floor; it'll be destroyed."  
  
Not if it wasn't filmed under the terms of the present contract for insertion into the production in the first place, it wouldn't. Bregman had already shown his colours when he was at the SGC. He'd waved his flag of dedication to the right to know and to revealing the truth right smack in everyone's faces, and he'd done a good job of presenting that truth in the end. Although Jack knew he was probably just spitting in the wind with this, it couldn't hurt to add Bregman's name to the list of possible options. Actually, so far, to start off the list with it, damn it.  
  
Carter was talking on the telephone when they entered the office. Teal'c came over to them as Jack asked him, "What have you got? Any word from Daniel?"  
  
"No. Daniel Jackson has not been heard from. Colonel Carter has initiated a check of his credit card and cellular telephone usage. We are awaiting those results. We have confirmation that he was indeed driven to the location the driver specified, at the approximate time given us, however that is the last anyone has seen of him that we can determine."  
  
Jack was uncomfortable with Teal'c's choice of words. "You mean to the hotel? The underground lot?"  
  
Teal'c nodded. "The lot attendant's records indicate that a car with the same license plate as the one which was carrying Daniel Jackson entered the underground at three-twenty-eight, and exited at three-thirty-four with only the driver in the vehicle."  
  
Jack raised his eyebrows and made a windmilling motion, because it was obvious Teal'c wasn't happy with something and just needed a bit of encouragement to spit it out. "And... so?"  
  
Teal'c gave the gesture a pass and looked toward the doorway. "Where is Former Mr. President Sinclair? Why has he not returned here with you?  
  
"Mr. Sinclair left over forty-five minutes ago, Teal'c." Hammond looked a bit confused. "Why do you ask?"  
  
"If you were required to remain, then should he not still be here as well?"  
  
Good question, Jack thought. Jack actually wasn't at all clear on why the door had been so readily opened for Sinclair to slip out through right after his introductory speech, while Jack was forced to sit there for the entire time. Actually, that wasn't entirely true, because while he had been miffed about that when it happened, he'd found out near the end, when they'd called him up to accept the medal on Daniel's behalf, just why he'd had to sit through the whole thing. But he still wanted to know why Sinclair got to be the lucky one...  
  
Hammond gently remonstrated, "His wife is terminally ill. I think he can be forgiven for wanting to get home rather than sitting through the remainder of the ceremony, Teal'c. Don't you?"  
  
Okay, right, not the lucky one. Carter hung up the telephone just then, and excitedly interrupted them. "Sir. Sirs. I might have something." She rounded the desk and waved her hand-written notes at them. "The company providing the hired car that was to pick Daniel up to take him to your office, General Hammond? They apparently received a call from him cancelling the car."  
  
She stood there expectantly for a second, her chin stuck forward and her eyes wide with an unspoken guess what, guess what. That second was one second too long for Jack. "Spill it, Carter. What's the rest?" He desperately hoped she was going to say she'd discovered that Daniel had cancelled the car and hopped a plane back to Colorado. Because if he had done that, Daniel wouldn't survive Jack's return to the base but at least his early demise wouldn't be courtesy of unfamiliar hands.  
  
"The call was received at two-fifteen, Sir. The car was cancelled over an hour and half before Daniel was dropped off at the hotel. While he was still at lunch with Mr. Sinclair."  
  
"So, he decided to cancel it while he was at lunch? That would indicate he may well have had second thoughts, then." Hammond sounded disappointed in Daniel.  
  
Jack felt a flash of anger at the tone of Hammond's voice. Daniel wouldn't do that, at least not without calling and telling them. That was a given, and Hammond ought to know that. And then he remembered what Sinclair had said just as they'd been pushed to go their separate ways. "No... more like, someone cancelled it for him. Sinclair told me he'd suggested to Daniel that he cancel the car; that he use his driver. But he said Daniel didn't seem interested in doing that." He turned to Carter. "Shouldn't they do a return confirmation call for stuff like that?"  
  
"Yes, and that's what I was just waiting on hold to find out about. Apparently the caller knew the contract ID number," she told him. "And the only people who'd normally have access to the contract ID number would be the client and their agent, which in this case is..."  
  
"And they didn't do it?" Jack interrupted her, impatient to get to the punch line.  
  
"No, Sir. It took them some time to get back to me, but it appears the event organisers..." she waved a hand in the general direction of where the award ceremony had taken place, "They never placed the call. They did get a confirmation request from the company, but as the ID given to the company was correct they figured Daniel had to have placed the call. It's not all that unusual for that to happen."  
  
"Well then, according to this information and what Ray Sinclair told you, Jack, it appears Dr. Jackson probably fully expected the car to be there for him when he went back to the hotel, then. But it wasn't going to be." Hammond's expression hardened. "Someone cancelled the car and driver, taking its place? It looks like we have an abduction on our hands, people."  
  
"Yes, it does," Sam confirmed. "And when we figure out who might have got access to that ID number, we may well have a direct line to whoever is responsible."  
  
When, she'd just said, Jack realised. Not, if. Good girl. Go get 'em, Carter.  
  
"I think it might be wise to consider an alternate possibility." Teal'c shifted his weight slightly, his version of fidgeting, and Jack knew that Teal'c thought what he had to say was probably going to be unpopular. He said it anyway, of course. "I believe Mr. Sinclair may be responsible for the disappearance of Daniel Jackson."  
  
"What? Teal'c, no, that's impossible. He's... there's absolutely no..." Hammond protested, stammering around for a better reason than simply that the man had been President, while Teal'c just gazed at him with a raised eyebrow.  
  
After his own instantaneous, initial reaction of disbelief, Jack quickly thought about it, and something occurred to him. "He was pretty focused on telling me he'd made that suggestion to Daniel. To cancel the car." He felt faintly ill. If Sinclair was somehow, more than just incidentally, involved in Daniel disappearing, it was entirely possible they might never find Daniel. Power and influence didn't just disappear into thin air after the expiry of presidential terms of office.  
  
Teal'c was in for a hard sell here. Jack wasn't too pleased to go down that road unless there was something really solid to push him in that direction, and from the looks of Hammond that decision might not rest with him anyway. Hammond's face was ruddy, as if he was close to stroking out at even the thought that Sinclair could be involved in doing something bad to Daniel. Jack was both apprehensive and pleased when Hammond didn't summarily dismiss the idea, though, saying to Teal'c, "If you can convince me there's even one shred of highly plausible evidence of what you're saying, I'll consider it, Teal'c. But I mean highly plausible, not just unfounded suspicions. We can't afford to make the mistake of pursuing ghosts here. Not with people like this."  
  
Teal'c inclined his head. "I understand your concern. However, should we not be pursing all avenues of inquiry in trying to find Daniel Jackson? I do not believe the importance of the person who may have abducted him lessens Daniel Jackson's importance, nor the importance of finding him."  
  
Agh. That was truer than hell being hot, but it also meant Teal'c probably had nothing. Nothing other than suspicion born of proximity, circumstance, and opportunity, anyway. And the last one, opportunity, was a stretch even theoretically. Or...not? Jack stood up straighter as something occurred to him. "Carter? How do we know for sure the man in the back of Sinclair's car was Daniel?"  
  
She had that one covered. "The attendant identified him, Sir." She indicated a computer system, behind her. "I asked him on the phone to describe what he could remember of the occupants of the car. He couldn't remember much, but what he did recall sounded like Daniel. I downloaded a shot of Daniel from our server and sent it to him along with a few others of similarly nice-looking young men wearing glasses, via e-mail. He picked the right one."  
  
"E-mail?" The garage attendant had e-mail and internet access from his kiosk? Must be a union job or something. Never mind that. Jack dismissed the irrelevant topic from his mind, but immediately another one popped into its place unbidden. He simply couldn't not ask. "Wait. Other young men wearing glasses, who look like Daniel? Where did these pictures come from, Carter, and how did you know where to find them?"  
  
She looked startled at the question, stammering something half-baked about image searches and internet sites, and then cut herself off before she'd got to what Jack suspected was the good stuff. "That doesn't matter, does it, Sir. The important thing is that we have a positive identification of Daniel as being the passenger in that car. And the car left the garage without him inside."  
  
Okay, so it had been Daniel, but something didn't feel quite right all the same. Jack couldn't put his finger on it, though. He stabbed at the dark. "T? What were the times you said? For the parking garage?"  
  
Teal'c repeated them. Six minutes... six minutes. Where was the North Tower elevator in relation to the entrance to the lot? Jack turned to Hammond, but could already see that it wasn't going to be enough. He'd need more than that to justify going knocking on Sinclair's door.  
  
Hammond pursed his lips and gave Jack a few minutes for silent contemplation – must have known he was thinking, and needed the extra time, Jack kidded himself, and immediately missed Daniel – and then started flinging out the orders and expectations. Carter and Teal'c track down the organising staff and find out who gave up that ID number, and to who; Jack to go with Hammond to talk to the President about Daniel's absence probably not being of his own choosing. Let's deal with this people, yadda yadda, let's find our boy.  
  
As they left the room Teal'c stopped him with a hand to his chest, staring at him for a brief moment before turning away to go down the hall with Carter. Jack could see the conviction in Teal'c's eyes that they were looking in the wrong place. He hoped not. He sure hoped not.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Daniel had thought he'd smelled something burning. He wasn't sure is it was a good or bad thing, though, that it was turning out to be something other than his brain short-circuiting from the dangerous insanity of the situation.  
  
Peter jumped to his feet, joining Sinclair in staring in the direction Mavis indicated, and Daniel shuffled himself along on the floor as far forward as possible to look beyond the front wheel. There; he could see it. Oh, man. Fuliginous grey smoke was coming from amid the sacks piled in front of the wall, past the nose of the tractor. It clung heavily to the canvas of the bags around where they struggled up from within. And where there was smoke...?  
  
Wait. Not necessarily, it occurred to him. Maybe not yet, anyway. Peat moss could smoulder for a long time, without an appreciable flame. But they were in a confined space, and while the others could just walk out any time... . Those very same others were standing watching the curls of smoke thread their way along the sides of the canvas sacks, expressions of alarmed, confused fascination on their faces, and Daniel knew that for the moment they'd forgotten him. Not that that did him any good; he couldn't exactly slip out the back way while they weren't looking. Not that there was a back way out.  
  
As Mavis and her husband took what Daniel was sure were unconscious steps backwards away from the sight, Peter took an intentional step toward it. "What the hell?" he complained, the hand holding the gun falling to hang down by his side. "What's that from?"  
  
Good question, but really, wasn't this a time for action rather than standing around staring or asking questions? Even as they'd taken these few moments to watch, the dirty grey strands of smoke had begun to multiply and thicken, starting to billow away from the canvas surface of the bags. Daniel cleared his throat, prompting, "Uh, hello? A little tied up, here?"  
  
Even if Peter completely ignored it, Daniel's comment seemed to wake up Sinclair. Or at least the sound of his voice did. Sinclair didn't seem to really have registered the words themselves, looking dumbly toward Daniel for an instant before abruptly turning to his wife. "Mavis, leave. Go wait outside for us." He took her by the shoulders, gently turned her around, and firmly propelled her a few steps in the direction of the door.  
  
Sinclair turned back toward the smoke, and Daniel saw that if Sinclair was relying on her to maintain the forward momentum, he was going to be disappointed. She looked back over her shoulder, first toward the bags of peat moss and then at Daniel. Even before she'd completed her first faltering step, Daniel recognised from the doubt and yearning on her face that her need to stay and chase after the new life she thought Daniel could give her outweighed her fear of the smoke.  
  
Well, good for her. She was free to move about wherever and when ever she wanted. He wasn't, and the only thing that might possibly have outweighed Daniel's fear of dying of smoke inhalation while attached to a lawn mower was dying of a gunshot wound while attached to a lawn mower. The smoke was a sure thing, though; it was already here, and so far the bullet was still in the gun. Daniel knew he had to take the risk of making Peter more unhappy than he already was, because just sitting here waiting and hoping for Sinclair to make the difference really didn't seem to be nearly proactive enough. The speed at which the bitter smell and amount of smoke was increasing was alarming. The air was getting pretty thick on that side of the building.  
  
Daniel climbed onto his knees, hunching forward as the part of his arm under the mower couldn't come up with the rest of him. "Look, I hate to be a pain or anything..." Sinclair looked over at him, seeming almost surprised that he was still there, and Daniel wagged his head toward the tractor. "Can I please be let loose now? Seeing as the place is, well, on fire, and all."  
  
Those words Sinclair got. He still seemed not quite all there, though, hardly masterful. "Yes, yes, of course. Peter, do it. We have to get out of here." Then he coughed.  
  
Stifling a cough himself, Daniel cursed under his breath as Peter simply cast him a disdainful look, tossing off the concern as inconsequential. "Oh, please. Nothing's on fire. It's just a bit of smoke. We can leave any time, and that's not going to be until we finish what we came here to do."  
  
Just a bit of smoke. Daniel stared at him, vaguely aware of his own jaw dropping in amazement, but mostly just aware that Peter really truly didn't give a rat's ass about Daniel's life beyond getting what he wanted from him, which of course was impossible. Aware without a shadow of a doubt now that he was going to stay right where he was unless or until Sinclair himself got down on the floor and set him free. It wasn't a happy thought, and it wasn't a happy sight to see Sinclair standing there looking vaguely annoyed with Peter but not actually doing anything about it.  
  
A growing sense of desperate frustration pushed Daniel's voice to a near yell. "Come on! Ray, please, he's not listening – you have to do it. Let me go." He yanked his arm hard with the last word, hard enough that he almost lost his balance, and felt the sting of the cable tie digging into his abraded wrist. It got him nowhere.  
  
"Ray?" Mavis stood essentially where her husband had left her, wringing her hands. She coughed twice, weakly, and her voice was small and confused. "What are we going to do now, Ray? I'm not sure what to do."  
  
Sinclair stared at her, doing reprise of the look he'd given Daniel, actually seeming surprised she was still even there too. Daniel wondered, for a instant, just how well the man had ever really known his wife, if at all, and then shoved the irrelevancy from his mind. There was only one possible answer to her question, and Daniel would have given it to her himself except that Peter beat him to the punch.  
  
Unfortunately, Peter's was the wrong answer. "Mavis, nothing's changed. Go stand outside the door, out of the smoke. I'll take care of this."  
  
"No. I don't want... what if we're supposed to be close together, or touching, or..." She coughed, and then suddenly dry-retched, bending forward with her hand to her chest.  
  
Sinclair seemed frozen in place for an instant and then darted toward her, but Peter had got a head start and beat him there. He wrapped an arm around her waist, all but literally lifting her off her feet. "I'll take her outside. Be right back," he told Sinclair, who stood there nodding dumbly.  
  
Peter swept her along to the door, and as they disappeared through it Daniel quickly urged Sinclair, "Okay, come on. Come on! Let's do this. Do you have a penknife? Something?" Sinclair swung around to look at him and shook his head just as dumbly, but fortunately what Daniel had said must have sunk in because he moved, walking over to Daniel.  
  
Daniel started looking the room over for something that could be used to cut him free, gratified to see Sinclair seeming a bit more on the ball and acting with a sense, however faint it may be, of purpose. Sinclair knelt down next to him and ran his own hand along Daniel's forearm where it disappeared underneath the mower. Lots of stuff hung from hooks on the walls, but it was mostly larger tools like pruning shears and the like; the smallest pair of gardening snips Daniel could see were thick and cumbersome enough that they'd be more likely to severe tendons and ligaments than just the plastic strap.  
  
Sinclair was down in a crouch, leaning far forward against Daniel's thigh as he explored the bar Daniel was attached to, walking his fingers over Daniel's wrist and the cable tie. "You're bleeding..." he whispered, and suddenly pulled his arm out from under, staring at the dots of Daniel's blood on his fingertips. He straightened, and lifted his head to stare in amazement at Daniel. "Your wrist is bleeding." Something seemed to spark – to snap, really – in his eyes, and then his face hardened.  
  
No shit, Sherlock, Daniel thought, but didn't say anything. Peter showed up at the doorway, making a fair bit of angry noise as he bulled past the boxes piled there. "We can't let him go, Ray. In fact," he gestured toward where the smoke was coming from, "I think this gave me an idea. It just might be helpful."  
  
As Daniel looked up at Peter and incidentally toward the fading light coming in through the door, he became aware of just how thick it was getting in the room. The smell was a lot stronger, and the hot tickle at the back of Daniel's throat was becoming almost impossible to ignore. His eyes were starting to sting, too. There was something else impossible to ignore as well, though: the frank and almost open admission of what Daniel had already known; Peter had no intention of letting him live through this, no matter whether he could do the impossible or not.  
  
"What? You must be insane." Sinclair pushed himself to his feet. The depth of Sinclair's anger was obvious, and compared to the dull, stunned lifelessness he'd displayed just before now, Daniel thought this was a really good look for the man. Sinclair help up his hand, displaying his bloodied fingers as if they were all anyone needed to know about this story. "Enough is enough, Peter. We're setting him free, and we're all getting out of here before this whole building goes up."  
  
"There's no fire!" Peter yelled in frustration. "It's just some smouldering, maybe from that stuff sitting there too long. Maybe a mouse farted, I don't know, but hell, Ray, nothing's on fire. It'll go on smoking for days like this, if you let it."  
  
No. With a sudden mental image of a flicker of flame, Daniel realised this wasn't a matter of Mighty Mouse with a bad case of indigestion. He remembered the flare of Peter's lighter, the cigarette dangling from his mouth. "No. Your cigarette," he looked up at Peter in alarm. "You tossed your cigarette. It must have slid down into or between the bags."  
  
Peter's face screwed up in thought, and then he cursed, sounding thoroughly disgusted. "Oh, shit."  
  
Mavis' voice came from the doorway. "Is there a fire? Does that mean there's a fire?" she asked, the fear clear in her voice. "Ray, come away... if there's a fire..."  
  
"No! No, no, no," Peter ranted. "There's no goddamn fire. Jesus, you people. If this freaks you out that much, fine." He swept the side of his jacket to one side and holstered his gun with quick, angry movements. "Fine," he rapped, striding over toward the pile of bags. "I'll go find it and stomp it out."  
  
Uh, what? Could anyone be so stupid as to...? Evidently so; Daniel reared up in horror as Peter reached down into the billow of smoke that all but concealed several of the canvas bags. "No, don't!" he screamed, and screamed it again and then again as Peter quickly hefted one bag and tossed it off to one side and then did the same to another, but was too little too late. Too late, too late, and as air rushing into the newly open space gave life to the hidden monster, Daniel instinctively threw his free arm up in front of his face to ward off the huge whoosh and terrible burst of heat and flame. It swept up Peter's arm like an angry swarm of bees, taking possession of the sleeve of his jacket and moving on to sting at his neck and face in the instant before it ignited his collar and his hair.  
  
Peter shrieked, spun around, fell, got up slapping at his face and hair, flames clinging to his arm and spreading to his chest and back. And ran. Disappeared from Daniel's line of sight. Daniel wrenched against the restraint desperately, jerking and pulling away from the tractor, Mavis' screaming and Peter's shrieking and Sinclair's shouting filling his ears as the sight of the flames devouring the canvas and reaching out to anything in the area filled his vision. He couldn't take his eyes off it, was terrified and mesmerised at the same time by the sight of the fire licking up the wall studs. Thick, malignant smoke surged from the area, pulsing out from the flames to claw its way along the wall and hover amid the roof joists, some of it exploring and finding escape through the open eaves.  
  
The acrid particles of smoke stung his eyes and burned their way into his nose and down his throat, sending him into a fit of coughing, and the heat was getting too strong on his face. He had no choice but to turn away, and as he deflected his vision downward and toward the other end of the room, through tearing eyes he saw Peter lying on the floor just in front of the doorway, motionless underneath what looked like the remains of Sinclair's dress-suit jacket. Sinclair was half-lying almost but not quite on top of him, seeming to be supported, then to be pushed further upward, by the gruesome smoulder coming off Peter's body. Daniel realised that was just a macabre figment of his imagination, though; Sinclair was actually in the act of getting up off Peter.  
  
There was a shrill noise barely audible above the roar of flames, and Daniel looked for it without conscious thought, finding it to be coming from Mavis where she knelt in front of the boxes to the side of the doorway, keening, her hands held up over her eyes to block out the horrible sight in front of her.  
  
The heat of the burning wall across from him beat against Daniel's body, and the metal of the tractor cowling next to his face was warming up not so nicely. He had to get loose from here – there was no more time. The open eaves might help provide an outlet for the smoke, but that'd just result in more air being pulled in through the doorway to feed the fire. And the smoke was collecting alarmingly quickly, anyway, even with the eaves being open.  
  
Panic took a firm grip on him as a big whoosh and sudden increase in the heat indicated the flames found something new they quite liked. Daniel pulled against the bite of the zap strap and screamed at Sinclair, a wordless, strangled plea for help that burned his throat almost as badly as the hot smoke did. Yet another fresh spate of flame and smoke shot out horizontally, nearby, something popping loudly as it burned. Frantic, he squirmed himself around to face the side of the tractor and raised his leg up high, bending his knee to brace one foot up against it, and leaned back, putting all he had into it. He yanked and pulled violently, and felt something give way at his wrist, but it wasn't the restraint and when he dropped his jaw from the shock of it and howled out the pain he got a lungful of burning smoke.  
  
Curling forward helplessly as the coughing and the pain in his wrist undid any hope of trying further, Daniel felt a cold chill of terror wash through him despite the heat of the fire. He didn't want to die like this. Please, please, don't let me burn.  
  
It was getting hard to see, not only because his eyes hurt like hell but also because the smoke was settling lower in the room as the peat moss did its worst and beside, behind, and above it the fire continued to find new things of interest. He closed his eyes, feeling tears stream down his face, and then just as he was that close to giving it up as a lost cause he blessedly, wonderfully, amazingly felt hands on his back. They transferred to his restrained arm, and a voice filtered in through the sound of his own hacking coughs. Sinclair. Telling him to move forward... lean forward, slide, and put some slack on it. Even when Daniel swallowed the last cough, he could barely make out what Sinclair was saying, and realised when he felt damp fabric slide across the side of his face where Sinclair was talking into his ear, that Sinclair had something over his mouth that was muffling his voice.  
  
He wanted one, too. Could he have one? Please! And yes, there it was, a slap of wet against his nose and mouth, and Daniel reached up with his free hand to hold the scrap of fabric in place. It smelled faintly of something nice, something almost sweet, under the stink of smoke. He opened his eyes and Sinclair was right there, his face only inches from Daniel's. When he saw that Daniel had the cloth under control, he nodded sharply, and got down on the floor, rolling to peer up underneath the tractor. Sinclair's cloth was larger, long enough to go around his head to tie at the back, and Daniel recognised it as being part of the blouse Mavis had been wearing.  
  
That scared him, a layer of fear pouncing atop the horror he already felt, and he jerked his head around, looking for her, but he couldn't find her. Couldn't see her anywhere. Couldn't see much of anything, really, through eyes burning in their sockets from the smoke. "Where is she? Where is she?" she asked Sinclair, dropping the cloth from his face and clutching at Sinclair's shoulder. "Is she all right?" It made him cough, and cough more, and choke, and he almost puked before he managed to bring the cloth back up to cover his mouth and nose again.  
  
Sinclair yelled through his makeshift facemask that she was fine, outside, waving a hand that held a sharp-tipped hunting knife toward the door, and Daniel sagged with relief on two counts: Mavis and the knife. He wondered if that was the same knife that Peter had used to slice his soiled jacket off him when he was waking up, and hoped it was and that Peter had given it to Sinclair to use. Because that'd mean Peter wasn't burned to death.  
  
Sinclair ducked back down, and Daniel soon felt the sharp tip of the knife somewhere against his skin... somewhere... he couldn't place exactly where it was, because the pain from whatever he'd done to his wrist had spread to most of his arm. But somehow he knew it wasn't in the right place. Not even close, his mind shrieked at him, not even close, and that means you're going to burn. Amid the intense throb that went from his fingers almost up to his elbow, suddenly there was a stab of brighter pain and Sinclair's body jerked a bit, his leg kicking out at the floor. He pulled his hand, and the knife, out from under. "Can't get it," he yelled at Daniel over the roar and flick of the flames, and then even despite his cloth mask Sinclair burst out coughing.  
  
Breathing was getting difficult enough for both of them that they didn't have much time left, Daniel realised. The inside of his nose and mouth, and down in his throat, felt singed. His skin itched and tingled painfully from far too much heat in far too close proximity, and he couldn't keep his eyes open for longer than a few seconds at a time without them stinging so badly that he couldn't stand it. "Can't get it," Sinclair repeated when he'd stopped coughing. "Can't reach properly; can't see what I'm doing. Cutting you instead of the tie."  
  
God, who cared? Just cut, Daniel thought wildly, who bloody well cared? Just take the freaking knife and slice everything, everywhere, and keep on slicing until his arm dropped away, free from the damned metal. At this point he wasn't even sure he cared if his entire hand was cut off – he just wanted out of here. The flames weren't any closer yet, but the smoke was becoming terrifyingly heavy, and it was hot, hot, it was too hot, he was starting to burn up from the inside out here. He clamped the damp cloth to his face and cried a few beats of bitter frustration into it, gasping in his effort not to lose control of himself.  
  
There was a shove to his hip, sudden and rough, that was hard enough to send him falling over onto his side. His arm protested vehemently as he fell back, his elbow and shoulder twisting along with his wrist, pulling a cry of pain from him. Sinclair's foot in his groin didn't help matters, but it clued Daniel into the fact that something new was going on. Sinclair was fumbling madly at the seat and steering wheel of the tractor, trying to both pull himself to his feet and whirl around at the same time, and Daniel saw why the moment he turned his own head.  
  
Mavis stood behind them, half her face covered with a sleeve from her blouse, the white camisole she wore covered with grey soot and stained with sweat. She reached out toward her husband, only to have Sinclair knock her hand away and cry out as he tried to turn her to go back toward the door. "No! What are you doing? Get out, get out."  
  
But she didn't get out. She wobbled even closer, and Daniel could see the sleeve over her face was dripping wet and that she was trying to say something underneath it. The water dribbled down her neck, leaving a streak in the soot that coloured her skin. Water... water? Daniel's own face cloth was damp, and he suddenly felt incredibly stupid. He grabbed at Sinclair, pulling him back from his efforts to get Mavis out of there. "The water, use the water..." His throat hurt, and he felt hoarse. He wasn't even sure he was able to speak loud enough to be heard. "Where did the water come from? God, use –"  
  
"No, no," Sinclair heard him and shook his head vehemently. He leaned a bit closer, speaking into Daniel's ear. "It's just a puddle of run-off," he told him, pointing toward the doorway with the hand that held the knife. "There's no running water here." And then Daniel realised that everything in the small building had looked old, the tools on the walls bent and rusty, the floor and the bags of peat and soil and whatever else dusty, stained, and abandoned-looking. Something in him splintered, and he abruptly felt impossibly nauseated. Felt himself shaking his head in denial, and he closed his eyes as a momentary bout of vertigo sent the room and himself spinning in different directions. It was hot, so hot. He couldn't breathe and the fire was right there, right there across the room, and the smoke was hanging right above his head now like a malevolent curtain and he was till tied to the lawn mower, and he was terrified.  
  
There was a sound, a human noise of some kind, and he ignored it, because he was too busy trying to keep his head on his shoulders. Hands closed onto his face, forcing his head up from where he'd allowed it to droop. He opened his eyes to find himself staring right into Mavis', and the vertigo settled to background dizziness as he tried to understand, without success, what she was saying to him. She frowned, and suddenly let go of him and turned away. He followed her movement, turning his head just in time to see her snatch the knife out of Sinclair's hand. There was a brief scuffle as he tried to hold her back without hurting her, but she pushed at him, saying something into his ear, and with a nod he suddenly let her go.  
  
She disappeared from view, staggering around the back of the tractor with the knife in her hand. Sinclair positioned himself standing over of Daniel, his feet straddling Daniel's hips, and placed both hands against the side of the engine cowling. And Daniel understood. God, he understood, and he pushed at Sinclair's legs, bumping and shoving until the man looked down at him and stepped to one side, seeming puzzled about the pummelling he was suddenly taking. Daniel climbed to his knees and twisted his body, placing his left shoulder and upper arm against the side of the tractor above where his forearm was trapped beneath it. Sinclair nodded at him then, and Daniel dropped the cloth he'd been holding over his mouth and nose and braced himself, placing his right hand against the cowling and his right leg out to the side for maximum leverage. Then he waited for Mavis to let them know she'd slashed the tires on the opposite side, getting the air out of them, and was safely out of the way.  
  
They heaved, Sinclair pushing with a rocking motion up above, using the tractor's high centre of gravity against it while Daniel did his best to have some sort of effect from lower down. He bent his knee and planted his foot. Pushed outward with his leg and slammed his shoulder against the side of the tractor's engine compartment, backing off and then doing it again in concert with Sinclair's rhythm. His chest felt tight, and he was gasping, his eyes streaming, but damn it this was going to work, it had to. Come on, Murray, come on, he prayed to himself. The tractor tipped on the third attempt, the front tire next to Daniel coming up off the ground slightly, and Daniel put everything he had into the next shove, feeling something crunch in his shoulder as he did so. He ignored it and shoved, and as the wheel came up off the ground and Sinclair saw it and carried on with a steady push, Daniel heaved for all he was worth. Go, Murray, you ass-bastard, go, fall down and die, damn it!  
  
It did, slowly tipping away from him and then hovering just this side of the point of no return for a moment. Sinclair gave it a last mighty push, and however much Daniel wanted this he wasn't nearly prepared, and was viciously yanked forward and up by the restraint around his wrist as Murray suddenly lost the fight and slammed away, over, and then down to crash onto its side. His wrist shrieked, his arm felt like it had just been torn from his body at the elbow, and his hip and the side of his head crashed into the underside of the tractor as he was yanked along with it. His lower back slammed into the underside edge of the mower deck behind him, and then just as suddenly as the violence had begun it stopped, and he hung there for a moment, trembling and hurting. He coughed, feeling a sandpapery wheeze in his chest, and looked at the floor for his cloth, but he couldn't see it. Dizzy. The floor looped, and slid, and his heart pounded as his vision greyed out at the edges for a second.  
  
It was almost too much to do, to get his feet under him and put his weight on them. To stand up. Sinclair helped him, hoisting him up and hanging on to him as Mavis came over and tried to slide the tip of the knife up underneath the zap strap. But she was incredibly shaky and his wrist was swollen, and she couldn't do it without cutting him. She stared at Daniel, everything she had in her coming out her eyes at him, and he willed her not to worry about it. It was all right. It wasn't her fault. Just... just cut. She was obviously unwilling or unable to do that, because she false-started several times until Sinclair reached out and took the knife from her. He tried to fit it in at the edge where the strap attached him to the bar, but even that space was far too small, his wrist far too swollen and mucky to allow the knife to get in at the strap from the underside.  
  
Mavis was coughing almost continuously under her cloth. She appeared to be trying to speak to Daniel in the spaces between the paroxysms, but she couldn't put any volume behind the words and they were lost to him under the noise of the fire. He shook his head at her, waving her off toward the door, but she wouldn't go. She coughed again, more, and then more, doubling over, and would have sunk to her knees if Sinclair hadn't dropped the knife and caught her. Daniel's own knees were feeling weak, so rubbery that the sensation made him nauseous, and he could imagine just how bad she must be feeling given that she was so ill and frail to begin with.  
  
A gout of flame licked out over their heads, dropping heat and bits of burning something-or-others right onto them. Heavy, suffocating smoke sprung from it and settled over them, and Sinclair grabbed Mavis in a panic, but she struggled against him and reached out to grab hold of Daniel's shirt just in time so that he couldn't pull her away and carry her out of there. She pulled the fabric down off her face with her other hand, letting it hang onto her chest from around her neck, and weakly warded off her husband's attempts to put it back over her mouth. He couldn't both hold her and do that, so she won that battle for the moment, more out of strength of will than strength of body. Twisting her hand in Daniel's shirt, she tried to say something to him, and he bent as close as he could get to her.  
  
"Don't want to die," she wheezed. "Why... why do you get a choice... but I don't?"  
  
Oh god. Daniel could only choke out, "I'm sorry. I, I... I don't know," even though it wasn't nearly enough. It was lame and misleading, not even coming close to the truth, because really it wasn't a matter of choice at all. Access to the Stargate and all that lay beyond only tipped the odds in one direction; it didn't determine them. It's simply a roll of the dice, he wanted to tell her, but he had neither the breath nor the time for that right now, and knew that even if he could have forced the words out it wasn't something she was likely to accept.  
  
Instead, he put his breath to better purpose, urging Sinclair to get her out of there. She was struggling for air, her control over her body becoming uncoordinated from a combination of lack of oxygen and panic, and Daniel untangled her hand from his shirt easily. "Go. Go, get her out."  
  
"No... what about you?" Sinclair asked him, and Daniel shook his head and pushed out at him, wordlessly telling him to go, just go, seeing the fear in his eyes and sharing it with him. There was something else in Sinclair's eyes too, though, something indefinable that started to sharpen in importance as Sinclair grabbed his arm and stared hard at him for a moment. "Daniel... I..." But he didn't continue, looking away. The hand on Daniel's arm fell, and the moment passed.  
  
Knowing it wouldn't take much more encouragement to get Sinclair to take her out, Daniel pushed at him again. "Be fine," he told him. "Knife... give me the knife." Sinclair bent and retrieved the knife, but hesitated as he went to hand it to Daniel, looking from Mavis to where Daniel's arm was still anchored to the underside of the tractor.  
  
Mavis scrabbled at him, though, clawing at him in a panic, they both realised she was fighting for breath. Daniel grabbed the knife out of his hand and shouted at him, "Go, take her, now."  
  
"Come back," Sinclair promised him. "Be right back to help you." Then he was going, lifting Mavis into his arms and carrying her out, stepping over Peter and disappearing through the doorway.  
  
Alone now, Daniel spared a quick glance at the fire, blinking furiously as the smoke layered down still further to float around his head and finger his nose and mouth. He bent his knees slightly to stay under it as much as he could, but if he wanted to be able to reach the zap strap and cut it he couldn't help but directly breathe it in, and it only took a few seconds for his head to start spinning. The knife was too thick to make it under the swelling, he already knew that, and so didn't waste time trying to be tidy with this. His hand shaking and his vision not even remotely reliable, Daniel slid the wider, flat edge of the knife along the back of his wrist until it felt like it was right overtop of the plastic strap, and by feel swivelled the blade around until he thought it was at right angles to it. He paused, feeling infinitely inadequate as he struggled to invoke the courage to do this to himself.  
  
He'd be back, he told himself; Sinclair would be back. It'd be all right. But the fire was hot and the smoke heavy over him, and he was alone. Alone. Eyes squeezed closed. Breath held. Knees locked. Something blew up as it caught fire, a loud bang coupled with a fresh blast of impossible heat, and in a convulsive move Daniel turned the knife from flat to edge-on and pushed-slid it into his wrist with as much force as he could muster.  
  
There was a moment of nothing, and then, abruptly, the pain was incredible. His already ruined wrist absolutely shrieked, for a few precious seconds he couldn't afford becoming the only thing that existed in his world. He knew he screamed with it, because he could taste the smoke and feel it burn its way down into his lungs. Blood was flowing down his forearm, he could feel that too, and his locked knees were threatening to become most assuredly and uncontrollably unlocked, but he was till anchored to the damned strut, and he really, really didn't think he could do that to himself again. Then his knees did give out, and under his full weight heading for the floor the substantially severed strap gave up the ghost with an inaudible snap.  
  
Daniel didn't remember actually hitting the deck. He remembered the feel of the zap strap giving way, but he didn't remember the actual moment that he'd come to be lying on his stomach on the hard cement floor, coughing and crying and moaning in pain as his vision swam and his head spun. He wasn't sure how long he'd been there, either, but belatedly, after a moment of addled analysis, he decided it didn't really matter. He could feel himself lying on his wrist, blood slick on the floor under him, and knew from the tingly feel of his legs and how light-headed he was that if he didn't get up and moving he'd be in big trouble. He tried, but the moment he raised his head everything greyed out badly.  
  
Okay, he told himself, his head down on the floor again. It'd be okay. Sinclair would be back to help him any second. Every inch he made it toward the door, though, was an inch closer to fresh air, and an inch less that Sinclair would have to haul his heavy ass. So he kept this head down and pulled his arm out from under him, and then had to wait again to recover from the resulting near faint before he could move again. The floor tilted and twirled as he crawled forward, chest heaving, dragging his bleeding wrist, forcing his legs to bend and push, bend and push as his right arm reached and pulled.  
  
At first it was like swimming through wet concrete, and then it felt a bit better, like he was pulling and pushing himself through Vaseline, slipping along more easily. Then it got weird, resistance dying to zero as he hit the full vacuum of space, flipping and twisting and turning dizzyingly, and he didn't like the feel of that.  
  
It made him feel like he was going to throw up, so he stopped.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
They were going in circles. Again.  
  
They'd gone in a big time-wasting circle with tracking down who'd cancelled Daniel's ride, and now they were going in circles on their own ride. Jack glared at Carter. "I thought you're supposed to know your way around?"  
  
She cringed, muttering, "Sorry, Sir," as she slowed the car to allow them all to glance up the next roadway as they went by. No, no tell-tale marker there. The cringe softened Jack's annoyance a little; it wasn't her fault that the private road to the rear of the Sinclair's estate was so difficult to locate.  
  
The other going in circles stuff, well, that was a different story. Thanks to the combination of Hammond's inability to see past his political and military loyalties and Carter's dogged insistence that the direction she wanted to go in was the more feasible one, they'd wasted the better part of an hour chasing down a clue that had led them in a big arc back right to where Teal'c had wanted them to start from in the first place. Actually, though, it had been absurdly easy, and Jack well knew that it having taken less than an hour was a saving grace he shouldn't belittle. It could have taken longer, much longer. Days, even, if the snivelling little weasel from the car agency had managed to sneak under their radar.  
  
Jack couldn't really blame Hammond for being reluctant to accept that Sinclair could have anything to do with Daniel's disappearance; he could see how, without some sort of halfway plausible, remotely conceivable motive, it would seem quite a stretch. But Teal'c's instincts weren't something to be passed off out of hand, and even before Carter had linked the call to cancel the car with Sinclair's driver, Jack had been inclined to take Teal'c's suspicions more seriously than Hammond's reluctance. Hammond was still doubtful, but he'd given them the go-ahead to check it out first-hand. Of course, Hammond was under the impression they were going to go knock on Sinclair's front door and express some quiet concern about his driver's activities... but, well, what Hammond didn't know – yet – couldn't hurt him – yet.  
  
He eyed the smudge of dark smoke staining the pre-dusk sky. They'd noticed it as they'd driven down the main drag that led to the area where Sinclair lived, and as they'd gotten closer to the estate itself the faint blur of grey had darkened and spread. It was off to their left, looming large over the treetops of the wooded area in that direction, looking more and more like it wasn't just the result of someone doing some cutting and burning, but rather like something more akin to a structure fire. That wasn't their problem, though. Finding Daniel was their first concern.  
  
"Oh, crap!" Jack banged a hand against the panel of his door as they rounded the next corner. It was a dead end, giving them a great view of a high chain link fence surrounding the back of a majestic home nestled in the trees, set up on a slight rise in front of them. Wrong fence, wrong trees, wrong house, wrong estate, though. As Carter turned the car around, he looked at the written directions they'd been given again, not understanding where they could have gone wrong. They had though. They'd tried every side-road off the one on the map for over two miles, and no way was there a side-side-road with a large rock marker placed just fifteen yards in. They'd tried all along that road, and then taken this other one, and had travelled at least another mile along it to no avail.  
  
"Go back, Carter," he told her, pointing on the hand-drawn map to the road they'd been told Sinclair's main gate was on, and then moving his finger south to the road perpendicular to it. "The estate fronts onto here, and there's only these two roads accessible along the side and the back of it. The rest is all treed. Go back to where we were." They probably should just assume that the groundskeeper's entrance was just where they'd been told, even though they hadn't seen it on the first go around. She nodded, and as Teal'c peered at the directions over his shoulder from the back seat, Jack idly traced the drawn outline of the estate with his finger. Maybe they'd end up having to go around and announce themselves at the front after all. He wasn't at all interested in breaching a fence line only to find himself wandering around thirty acres of trees trying to locate the back of the main house.  
  
She booted it down the road going well over the speed limit, and took the turn back toward the one they'd started out on so quickly that the car leaned far enough for Jack to grab at the armrest next to him. She was just as annoyed as he was, obviously, and he suspected it was for the same reasons. That she was upset with herself mollified his own irritation with her somewhat, and he had to admit she'd been spectacularly efficient at tracking down the guy who'd given up the contract ID number. Two hundred dollars. Jack's hand curled into a tight fist at the thought. Two hundred lousy bucks had been the selling price of Daniel's freedom.  
  
The sun was just sinking below the treetops, the sky going from a relatively light red-tinged blue to a dim, pinkish-grey in a matter of minutes. They were closer, much closer, to the source of the dark smoke, he realised, as Carter turned onto the side-road that they had been told ran the length of the south side of the estate. She slowed down, and Jack was pretty sure he could smell the smoke even through the closed window beside him as they crawled along, carefully looking not just to the left but at both sides of the road, just in case what they'd been told was wrong or that they were so turned around that they couldn't figure out which side was which or where one property started and another left off.  
  
No rock marker. No break in the fence lines. No entrance to be seen at all on either side as they carried on down the road. Just a treeline interspersed with small areas of scrub, and two fences, one on either side. The one to the left was chain link, set close to the road along a strip of cleared ground, and the one on the right was a chipped and mossy, chest-high brick wall nestled in the bushes. Okay, well, Sinclair's place was old, apparently. One of the first to be built in the area, so they'd been told. Jack decided to concentrate on the property to their right, casting one last quick glance of disgust toward the new, very clearly not old, metal fence on the left. And, whoa there... the pillar of dark, billowing smoke was definitely coming from somewhere up ahead amid the trees on their left. They were close enough to it now that ash was blowing onto the windshield.  
  
"There," Teal'c pointed to the left, through the front windshield. "There, through the trees. Did you see it, O'Neill?"  
  
If it wasn't a road leading to Daniel, Jack was didn't want to see it. He knew for a fact it wasn't, and he absolutely, especially didn't want to see this, but there wasn't much choice in the matter. The faint flicker of yellow amid the trees that he'd hoped he hadn't really seen repeated itself, and Jack could have screamed with frustration. They'd have to stop and check it out – for all he knew someone's children were in trouble. He jerked his thumb toward the side of the road, but Carter had anticipated him and was already pulling over.  
  
"I'll call it in, Sir, then follow you." She put the car into park and reached for her cellphone. Then she had an after-thought, just as Jack was about to climb out of the car. "Oh, gosh... hopefully the fence isn't electrified."  
  
Oh, yeah, wouldn't that be just perfect. "Stay here, Carter, and wait for the fire department. Teal'c and I will check it out and if we need you we'll call." The smell of smoke was very strong now that he was out of the car. Checking to be sure his own phone was in his pocket, he followed Teal'c over to the fence, looking around for something to use to check it for live current. Teal'c nicely took care of that, though, leaping right up onto it and starting to climb before Jack could so much as formulate the warning in his mind, never mind speak the words.  
  
Teal'c didn't fry, so Jack just shrugged and went to follow, gripping the chain link at head level with both hands. And, yeow! Gah! He snatched his hands back and shook them wildly, letting out a shout. Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah it was charged all right. He danced in a circle, his arms twanging. The charge wasn't powerful enough to actually do any damage, but was plenty strong enough to discourage one hundred eighty pounds worth of grounded object from trying that again. He looked across at Teal'c who'd just jumped down to land on the opposite side, and decided that once they'd dealt with this stupid fire he was going to use Teal'c's unprotected head as a trampoline to get himself back over this fence.  
  
Embarrassed, Jack assessed the situation, re-playing Teal'c's leap at the fence in his mind. He waved off Teal'c's raised eyebrow. "Yeah, yeah. Fine, okay. I know. Feet first, I got it." He hoped.  
  
There was a loud crack from somewhere deep within the trees off to their left, and with another flick of yellow a fresh gust of dark smoke rose over the treetops. Teal'c took off into the trees at a run, yelling over his shoulder that he'd just go on ahead. His hands were still tingling and it took two deep breaths and a bit of stern self-talking to, but Jack took two steps back and then pushed off, jumping at the fence. He was actually surprised when he didn't drag a foot and get himself zapped again, and clambered over the top, dropping to the ground on the other side feeling a bit better about himself.  
  
It wasn't difficult to find his way through the woods to the site of the fire. About a hundred feet in, he crashed out from amid some bushes to find himself on an old dirt road. It was weedy and clearly hadn't been used for a long time, but the wheel ruts were unmistakable. He followed them at a run, hearing the crackle and popping of a sizeable fire get louder as he approached it. A couple of hundred more feet later the old road led him into a fair-sized open area more or less cleared of brush, and in the centre of that was his fire. A wood and brick building, old and looking just as unused as the road, sitting on a knoll about fifty feet from the road.  
  
He'd come up onto it from the back, where flames were only just starting to eat up the wood framing above the low wall of brick that made up that end of the structure. Most of the roof, on the other hand, was pretty much fully involved, and thick, deadly smoke poured out from open eaves between the top of the wall and the roof members. He could see flames licking up into the air from the left side, and knew the fire must have had made much more progress over there.  
  
Jack yelled for Teal'c but didn't hear an answer, and pelted along the road where it led in a wide arc from the back to around the right-hand side of the building. That wall was all wood, but even so wasn't too bad yet, he noticed, and as there was no door or window in it and no Teal'c anywhere in sight he kept on going. Despite that the two walls he'd just passed by weren't in full flame it was hot here, and the air so thick with smoke that his chest wasn't all happy with the deep breaths he was taking as he skirted the outside of the building. Just before the road took him around the next wide corner, its surface changed from being an old, unused rutted track to something semi-cleared and somewhat better tended. As he rounded the building, he caught sight of two cars parked well off to one side, just at the edge of the woods next to the road, and his heart jumped at the thought that someone might be inside.  
  
He stopped dead in his tracks as he transferred his eyes from the cars to the building. He'd come around to the front, he saw, where there was a single door, and out of that door billowed enough turbid, inky smoke that he seriously doubted anyone who might be in there would still be alive. It was a rolling mass, its egress obscuring most of the front of the building. He could see from this angle now that the far wall which hadn't been visible to him before was in full flame. He stared at it for a split second, captured by its horrible power, and then realised he couldn't see Teal'c. Spinning around, he called for him at the top of his lungs, his eyes searching the area.  
  
What the...? He didn't see Teal'c, but there was something over by one of the cars, on the ground over by – Crap! His brain caught up with his eyes and he realised what he was looking at was two people huddled on the ground between the two vehicles. Two soot-covered people, their backs to him, and he realised as he started over there that one was an adult sitting holding the other smaller person in their lap. A child? God, no, not a child.  
  
Hollering Teal'c's name for good measure yet again, scared as hell that Teal'c might have been stupid and brave or just plain old stupid enough to have gone in there, Jack ran over to the cars, pulling out his cellphone. He jabbed the speed-dial number for Carter on the fly, and skidded down to the ground next to the two people as he raised the phone to his ear.  
  
And then his brain decided to take a long weekend off. Get away from it all. Sorry, no information processed until further notice. See you on Monday morning.  
  
"Did you get them?" the man asked him. "Did you find them? Just in case it doesn't work. You have to find them." He cradled the limp woman in his lap to his chest, and stared at Jack through tearing, bloodshot eyes.  
  
What? What the hell? There was another voice in his ear, competing with the hoarse, barely comprehensible whatever that the man was saying, and it jerked Jack back from the state of utter disbelief that had momentarily disabled him. "Carter, get an ambulance here," he managed to snap at her, and discarded the phone as he reached out to Mavis Sinclair's throat. The pulse was there, but it was faint and erratic. Her chest barely rose and fell, and what little air she was moving went in and out accompanied by faint, wet crackling noises. Jack used his thumb to wipe some of the soot off from around her mouth, and then off a fingernail, and wasn't surprised to see just how pronounced the blue tinge was in both places.  
  
Sinclair kissed her on the forehead. "She'll be all right," he rasped. "I want my car keys just in case, though. From my jacket pocket. Peter has it." His eyes flicked over to the burning building. "He's in there. With my jacket." She gurgled, her chest heaving ineffectively, and soft foam appeared at the corner of her mouth. Sinclair patted her cheek and looked up at Jack, reassuring him, "She'll be fine."  
  
Feeling helpless, Jack closed his eyes a moment to block it all out, then turned his attention to something that was, hopefully, not a lost cause. He gripped Sinclair's shoulder, pulling him more upright, fighting to keep from letting his fear take over. "Daniel? Is Daniel in there?" He looked around the clearing, and at the door to the burning building. "Where's Teal'c? Sinclair..." He shook him slightly when there wasn't an answer. "Sinclair! Where is Teal'c?"  
  
Wait... there? Something moving amid the smoke? Yes! Jack dropped Sinclair and ran up the knoll for the doorway, realising as he got closer that Teal'c was slowly backing out the door on his hands and knees, dragging something. The smoke hit him in the face and stung his eyes as he dove for the doorway and grabbed Teal'c's ankle, and then his calf, and finally his waist, pulling to help him get out of there. Teal'c's clothes were hot to the touch, and Jack's hand slid in the soot on his back. God, please let it be Daniel, no, no, wait, don't let Daniel be anywhere around here, his mind chanted at him as he reached further along and grabbed the closest part of whatever it was Teal'c was dragging out of there.  
  
Not whatever. Whoever. He felt cloth under his hand, and under that flesh and bone. A shoulder. Teal'c was breathing hard, wheezing a bit, not moving terribly well. Jack ducked further forward into the smoke and felt along until he came across his target, a waistband, and wrapped both his hands into it. He lifted and pulled, and felt Teal'c let go and move aside as he yanked the dead weight forward across the threshold. Daniel's head, because he knew it was Daniel now, damn it, damn it, thunked against the doorframe and then with another heave Jack had him out. Not out of the smoke, though, and he scooted back, pulling, trying to ignore the laxity of Daniel's body and the way his head kept hitting the ground. Teal'c was doing okay, he saw, crawling further from the building under his own power, so Jack turned his full strength and attention to getting Daniel to some fresh air. Because Daniel wasn't dead, he wasn't. Not acceptable. He pulled him back until they made it where the ground started to slope, and then flipped Daniel toward the downgrade. Daniel's body rolled once on the incline, and then stopped in a sprawl that left his head turned away from Jack.  
  
He felt a hand on his leg. "O'Neill." Teal'c coughed roughly, then caught his breath. "I checked the rest of the building. One person remains inside. It is not far – near to the doorway." He coughed again, and Jack knew that was as close to an open admission as he was ever going to get that Teal'c didn't want to go in there again. It was up to him. He crawled the few feet over to where Daniel had come to rest. He had to check Daniel out, and then he'd –  
  
"He is badly burned. I was unable to determine if he still lives," Teal'c added an instant before a pop and crack and a roar came from the burning building. Part of the roof at the far side caved in, sending a shower of sparks and a gush of smoke out into the air. Jack immediately decided, screw it. This was Peter of the jacket and car keys, Peter of the two hundred dollar abduction, and as far as Jack was concerned that Peter could just stay right where he was. That the guy was unlikely to even still be alive in there, with all that heat and smoke and being burned, was strong secondary justification for him and Teal'c not risking their own lives to get him out. So, yeah. Screw it.  
  
Daniel was breathing, thank god. He could see it even from behind, the laboured breaths that meant he wasn't dead. Jack shook his head at Teal'c, no, forget it, and got up onto his knees to lean over Daniel. He could hear sirens, their shrill whoop coming not from where Carter had parked out on the road behind the woods, but from somewhere not far off along the dirt road in front of him. Another roar and crash came from the far side of the building, momentarily drowning out the noise of impending assistance as the remaining portion of the roof gave way. Jack's gut seized up with the knowledge that someone was still in there, but that abhorrence didn't change anything. Ignore it. See to Daniel. And to Sinclair's wife. Jack glanced over there to see Sinclair moving erratically, bent over her with her still in his lap, and it took a minute of confused watching before he understood what was going on.  
  
Sinclair was frantically trying to give his wife mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Jack tasted bile as he turned away. See to Daniel. Deal with something that was, hopefully, not a lost cause.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Jack's military ID had allowed him to bully his way into the front passenger seat of the ambulance carrying Daniel and Teal'c, but it hadn't done him much good since. The closest he could get was to stand in the hall opposite the separate room into which they'd wheeled Daniel, and peer through the gap between the wall and the partly closed door. There were two bays in the room, the one next to Daniel completely empty, its curtains pushed halfway back, and if Jack stood just so, just right here, he could see a little bit of what was going on. People at Daniel's side, the end of the stretcher, the wrappings of packages of equipment being tossed onto the floor. If they wheeled a stretcher into the empty bay, though, or decided to pull the curtains or close the door, he might as well go find a magazine to read.  
  
He was being silly, he knew, and should just go and find that magazine or maybe check on Teal'c again, instead of standing here hoping to catch a of glimpse of what was going on. But he was unnerved by what had gone on in the ambulance partway to the hospital, and he had the insane feeling that if he turned away, if he stopped concentrating on making Daniel be okay just because he said so, bad things would happen and Daniel wouldn't be okay.  
  
He'd been worried, and maybe even a bit scared, yeah, about the laboured breathing and the rush to get the oxygen mask on and an IV started... but he was pretty much accepting of most of that, basically, because it was only to be expected. He'd been all right with the condition of Daniel's wrist and forearm when the ambulance attendant had cleaned the worst of the soot and blood off to reveal the damage. And he'd coped with the rising anxiety as Daniel had started to come around, only to fight against the attempts to help him to the point that Teal'c had had to put aside his oxygen mask and help the EMT get Daniel under control.  
  
It had undone him, though, when in mid-fracas Daniel vomited a great gout of yuck and then promptly wheezed himself into a roadside intubation. Probably acute bronchospasm, the EMTs had told him and Teal'c. Daniel's airway was still open, they'd said; the intubation was precautionary. Their reassurances weren't especially helpful given the way the driver picked up his speed, though, and how closely the other guy was monitoring his patient.  
  
"Sir?" Carter was hesitant, using a light touch on his shoulder and a whisper to gain his attention. He hadn't heard or seen her come down the hall, and he immediately felt a bit guilty. She'd been right behind the emergency vehicles as they'd come down the access road from the main house, within the estate, and again had been right behind the ambulance carrying Daniel as it had pulled up at the ER entrance. Jack hadn't given her more than a quick glance either time, never mind answer any of her questions as to what was going on.  
  
"How is he?" she asked him now, again, her voice sounding strained. This time, he looked straight at her, noticing the anxiety on her face and the way she was clutching the clipboard so tightly that her knuckles were white.  
  
"I don't know. Not sure. He had some trouble breathing in the ambulance," he told her. The words didn't want to come out; somehow, for some reason, talking about it took a huge effort. "They stuck a tube in. Said it was bronchospasm from the irritation of the smoke. The only other thing I noticed was that his arm is all messed up."  
  
"All messed up?"  
  
"Yes, Carter, all messed up." Then he relented. She'd been pushed out of the loop and was worried, and his reluctance to talk didn't give him the right to be rude to her. "Cut, swollen. Mostly his wrist. Don't know what from." Come on, Daniel; be all right.  
  
"They said Teal'c seems fine. He's been up; got cleaned up, and tolerated it well. He can go, but they want someone to keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours." She tapped the clipboard. "Apparently the effects of smoke inhalation aren't necessarily readily obvious. Onset can be delayed."  
  
Right. Good, Carter, that's great to know. A nurse left the room Daniel was in, carrying a tray full of used medical equipment haphazardly covered with a blue cloth. She smiled at them as she went by. That had to be good, didn't it?  
  
"He wasn't exposed for very long; just a few minutes. So they don't think he's going to have any problems. I extended our stay at the hotel. Pete left this afternoon, which means I can share our room with Teal'c tonight and make sure he's all right."  
  
What? Make sure Teal'c... oh, yes, all right. Teal'c can go, twenty-four hours, yadda yadda. Wait, what was the clipboard for? Jack looked down at it, and she turned it slightly so he could see what it held. There was a form there, with spaces for information to be added, and a bunch of tick-boxes. "They wanted some information on Daniel," she explained. "Allergies, medications, past medical history, stuff like that. They won't give me computer access, so I can't pull it up from our secure server." She looked at him hopefully, if a bit warily. "I thought maybe you could help me fill it out for them, in case I might miss anything."  
  
Sure she did. Jack wasn't sure whether to be annoyed or grateful over her attempt to help him feel useful. He didn't bother mentioning that she well knew all the necessary information on each of them – blood type, allergies – was listed on several readily accessible medical information servers. It was inconceivable that she wouldn't have already directed the admissions department to that information. He looked up at her in silent accusation, and her wince confirmed it.  
  
The nurse returned, empty-handed, and smiled at them again as she went back in. Someone was leaving at the same time, and she opened the door wider for them to pass by one another. Jack couldn't hear any pumping or hissing noises coming from the bulky ventilator he could now see at the bedside, which scared him for a second, but oh, there was the lower half of Daniel's body and his legs were moving on their own, so Daniel must be alive. He'd been stripped down, and as a set of hands was unhurriedly washing his legs, Daniel was weakly reacting to their touch. Jack caught a glimpse of a catheter in the ouch place just before someone on the inside poked their head out, looked at them, said a quick, probably illicit, "He's doing okay," and pulled the door almost entirely closed again as they ducked back inside.  
  
"Oh thank goodness," Carter murmured under her breath, her voice a bit shaky. "I hope he stays that way." Jack nodded in agreement, leaning more heavily against the wall behind him. He wondered where the magazines were.  
  
"It also asks about his food likes and dislikes, Sir, and sleeping habits... stuff like that." She recovered her equilibrium quickly, biting her lip, her eyes wide in false innocence, and despite being so irritable and anxious, he almost laughed out loud.  
  
"Okay, okay." Feeling better for having seen that the atmosphere in the room was a lot more relaxed than it had been when Daniel had first been wheeled in there – when? He glanced at his watch and saw that well over an hour had passed – Jack allowed himself to be enticed. "Fine. Let's go see what Teal'c thinks Daniel's favourite food might be, then."  
  
"I vote for salo, Sir," Carter said, as Jack took one last look at the almost closed door and took her elbow, heading toward the stretcher bays where Teal'c had been put. Then she frowned. "Although, I think it's unlikely they'd have Hungarian-style dry-cured pork fat here anyway, so maybe we better go for something more mainstream American."  
  
Daniel really didn't like pork all that much, Jack thought, much less pork fat. Oh. Oh, all right, so maybe Carter was on to something here in the distraction, usefulness department after all. Jack smiled as he picked one thing he knew for certain that Daniel absolutely detested. "Oh, I think he'd really appreciate lots and lots of instant banana cream pudding while he recovers, don't you?" He leaned over to look at the form. "So what other information about him do they want?"  
  
She snorted, quite indelicately he thought, and they crossed the small open area that separated the main stretcher bays from the closed-in rooms across the way. Teal'c sat upright on the stretcher in the fourth bay down, and Jack was pleased to see he was breathing easily, no longer using oxygen nor spitting out gobs of dark grey saliva. "Hey, T. Feeling better, I see." He didn't stink of smoke anymore, either, thank goodness. "Smell better, too."  
  
"As you say, O'Neill." Teal'c inclined his head slightly, his eyes troubled. "What of Daniel Jackson?"  
  
The answer, and a question, came from behind Jack by way of an assured male voice. "I'm Dr. Halpern. He's stable for now. Any of you people family members?" Jack turned to see it was the person who'd left Daniel just minutes ago, squeezing out the door past the nurse. He immediately held up a hand, me, me, pick me, and while the doctor clearly didn't believe him, he quirked a small smile at him and then at Teal'c, and observed, "I just saw you in the hall. You two came in with him, in the ambulance, right?"  
  
Carter clutched her clipboard to her chest, looking isolated and worried again, and Jack pointed at her. "Yeah. And she's his mother. Or the next closest thing to it, anyway." He tapped on the back of the clipboard. "Knows all his likes and dislikes." There, okay? Now that we've all been introduced, how the hell is Daniel?  
  
The doctor eyed his own shoes for a moment, his lips twitching. When he looked up again, it was with a professional demeanour firmly in place. "I'm looking for either a family member, or a General Hammond. Is that you?" he asked Jack, and Jack very nearly said yes. Would have said yes if he hadn't known for sure that Hammond was already on the way. He really ought to talk to Daniel about changing that emergency notification, power of attorney thing, now that Hammond was no longer at the SGC and Jack himself was no longer going off-world – and thus no longer subject to possibly being killed right alongside Daniel on a mission.  
  
It looked like they'd have to wait until Hammond got there in order to get the nitty-gritty on Daniel's condition. Okay, fine. He shook his head no, he wasn't Hammond, and suddenly found himself saying, "I guess you found his medical info. So, you don't need his allergies or blood type then?" The doctor simply looked at him, and with an internal wince over his own petulant behaviour, Jack tipped his head toward Carter. "Better cross those off the list, Carter."  
  
Doctor Halpern shook his head, and Jack was glad of the man's sense of humour as Halpern commented, "Just consider yourselves lucky we aren't very busy this evening. If we were, I wouldn't have time to try not to be annoyed with you people cluttering up the emergency department. Your friend – I'm taking it on faith that you are his friends – is doing relatively well right now. He's had something for pain and is mildly sedated. His breathing has improved with medication, but I've left him intubated for now. We'll scope him in the morning to see what sort of shape his bronchial tree and lungs are in. If it looks all right and he's able to keep his blood-oxygen levels up breathing on his own, we'll probably take the tube out sometime late tomorrow."  
  
Jack closed his eyes briefly in relief, and when he opened them it was to see General Hammond steaming toward them from the direction of the admissions department. He waved a hand toward him. "Here comes your General." Doctor Halpern turned, and they all waited for Hammond to come close enough for introductions. Halpern repeated to the general what he'd already just told the rest of them, and then added some additional information that straightened Jack's back and made him want to hit something.  
  
"Okay, wait." He held up his hand. "Can you repeat that?" He really didn't want to hear it again, necessarily, but he wanted to be sure he got what it probably meant right.  
  
Halpern looked confused over the sudden intense, grim looks he was getting from all four of them. "What? About his wrist?"  
  
General Hammond nodded, his face like stone. "Yes, please. You said something in particular about your impression of the abraded areas?"  
  
"Oh, I see..." The internal light went on and Halpern looked alarmed, then narrowed his eyes. "I see. Well, it was just my impression of what it seemed similar to. I didn't mean to imply anything. We've bandaged it, but we can take that off if you need to have a look, or take photos. If that's the case, you should do it soon. It's already quite swollen and as the bruising progresses its appearance will change."  
  
"Jack, Colonel Carter, go. Take a look at it." Hammond turned to Teal'c. "Are you all right? I've been told you aren't being admitted. Do you feel up to coming with me while I pay someone a visit?" Teal'c glanced down at the hospital scrubs he was wearing, and Hammond waved off the concern. "No, no, that's fine. We aren't leaving here."  
  
Halpern interrupted, telling Jack, "When you're ready, just ask any of the nurses to get me. I'll be around." He nodded at them, a look of faint alarm lingering on his face, and turned and wandered off. Jack would have grabbed him and told him that they were ready to go see Daniel now, right this very second, except that he had something important to check out with Hammond. Pending confirmation, his schedule was about to get considerably fuller than it had been for the last couple of hours.  
  
Hammond anticipated him. "No, Jack. The answer is no. You're to stay away from him, do you understand?"  
  
Confirmation. Jack had assumed Sinclair had been taken elsewhere, as he hadn't seen any gluts of black-suited guardians nor any notable others around anywhere. It appeared he'd assumed wrong. He turned an annoyed look onto Carter, as she'd still been there as the ambulance he and Teal'c left the scene in had sped away, leaving Sinclair and his wife to await a second ambulance. She just shrugged at him, though, clearly not in the know, and he remembered how quickly she'd pulled up behind the ambulance as it had arrived here. He gave her a shrug of absolution in return, and found himself eyeing the department wondering where they could have stashed Sinclair.  
  
Hammond was having none of it. "Jack, I said no. Do I have to make it an order?"  
  
Yes, you do. Absolutely. Okay, wait, no, maybe be not. A formal order would be bad. Don't. Hammond touched him on the shoulder, his tone softening. "His wife just died, Jack. Let me go talk to him. Teal'c can come with me to stand in the background. If there's anything to catch, anything to pick up on, Teal'c will do it and we can discuss it later." He studied Jack for a quick second. "Go. See to Daniel. Please try to trust me with this."  
  
At that, Jack took a step back from his need for retribution, and carefully regarded Hammond. Right. He could see it now, that edge of bitter disappointment tainting Hammond's compassion for Sinclair, confusing and confounding Hammond's previously held faith in the man. That's why Hammond was taking Teal'c to stand in as distant observer. Fair enough, then. And of course the point that Sinclair had just lost his wife was a good one. Jack was angry, and he liked to think of himself as a man of action, but he wasn't heartless. Hammond was right, and anyway, Daniel should come first.  
  
Come to think of it, did Jack even want to be anywhere near the dog and pony show that was sure to be going on wherever Sinclair was? No, not now, that was for sure. That thought spawned a question. "Are you and Teal'c going to even get in past all the spooks and rigmarole?"  
  
Hammond sighed deeply. "There isn't any of that, Jack. At least, not yet." He scratched the side of his face, seeming uncomfortable about saying anything else, but then decided to have out with it. "He called me. Even before you did, Colonel Carter. He called from the ambulance and asked me to ensure some privacy for him here. That's what I've been doing. No one but us and the emergency team even know he's here. So far, anyway." Hammond signalled to Teal'c to get up. "That won't last much longer, though. I need to see him again before word gets out. Teal'c? Let's go."  
  
Ah. So Hammond had already seen Sinclair, had been with him for a time over the past couple of hours. He just hadn't spoken with him about Daniel and the five W's of all that had happened. Jack nodded to himself, and thinking back to Sinclair's behaviour at the fire he supposed he could understand just why Hammond had chosen to wait a bit before doing that. That Hammond had decided not to address it without someone else there with him was reassuring – it meant that despite his past loyalty to Sinclair and his present confusion over this mess, Hammond wasn't about to allow anything to be glossed over or any personal responsibility to be hidden.  
  
Jack was about to acknowledge that, and to ask how Sinclair was, but Teal'c slid off the stretcher and Hammond turned and left without so much as another glance at Jack. Teal'c bowed slightly, and followed him. Okay. So, Daniel, then. Time to go see Daniel. Carter thought so too, obviously, because she turned and captured the attention of the first staff member who walked by, only to get a shake of a head in answer to her question of where they could find the doctor. She didn't bother with asking anyone else; she just turned on her heel and headed back toward the room where Daniel was.  
  
When they got there, the door was open and there was a flurry of activity going on in the room, with three people surrounding the stretcher fussing with detaching cardiac monitor leads and IV lines from IV pumps. After a moment of high anxiety, Jack realised they were talking to Daniel, which was good of course, and that they were probably readying him to be moved.  
  
The same nurse who had smiled at them earlier noticed them at the door. "Oh. You're back. Are you looking for Dr. Halpern? He mentioned you needed to see Mr. Jackson's arm." She sounded completely mystified as to why they might want to subject themselves to that, but all the same, told them, "We need to put a clean dressing on it, anyway, before we transfer him to the unit. You can come in if you like. Dr. Halpern will be right back."  
  
Okay. Sure. Jack hesitated , and Carter slid into the room in front of him. He heard her sharp intake of breath as she got a look at Daniel, and felt his own breath hitch as he looked over her shoulder. Daniel was lying on his right side, apparently asleep, or sedated, or unconscious. As long as he wasn't in pain and was going to be all right in the end, any of them would do, Jack figured. The tube down his throat was connected to oxygen, the combination of the tape holding the tube in place and the tubing obscuring most of his face from their view. He was covered to the waist with a sheet and lightweight blanket, with his left hand and forearm supported in front of him on a pile of pillows. A bulky swath of blood and serum stained bandages enveloped much of his hand and lower forearm. Overall, he looked awful. They'd cleaned him up as best they could, obviously, but his hair was still filthy and Jack couldn't tell if the large discoloured area on his left shoulder and upper arm was leftover soot, miscellaneous grime, or the makings of a massive bruise.  
  
Carter apparently could. She went right up to the bedside, chucking the clipboard onto a tabletop on the way, and ran a gentle finger along his biceps. "Oh, Daniel," she said, and then said it again, "Oh god, Daniel." She looked back over her shoulder at Jack, distressed on Daniel's behalf. "His arm is...it's... a mess."  
  
Gosh, that sounded vaguely familiar. Jack moved forward to stand next to Carter as the nurse quietly advised them, "He's not actually asleep. He can hear and understand you. The pain medication has a sedating effect so it's a bit of a struggle for him to respond, but you can talk to him. He seems to know what's going on." She waggled her head slightly at her two co-workers – not nurses, Jack realised; maybe porters? – and they quietly left the room.  
  
She patted Daniel's cheek, not exactly overly gentle. "Mr. Jackson? Your friends are here." She had to repeat it, but then Daniel moved, his head sliding on the pillow and his right hand pulling slightly against a gauze restraint that loosely tied that hand to the side of the bed. Jack bristled upon noticing that, but then saw that the gauze strip was fairly long, giving Daniel enough freedom of movement to move his hand and arm at will but not quite enough for him to reach right on up to his face. Remembering how, as they'd pulled into the ambulance bay at the hospital, a disoriented Daniel in a pained stupor had been intent on finding some way to get the tube out, Jack supposed he could see the sense in that loose length of gauze fastened to Daniel's wrist.  
  
"Daniel? It's Sam." Carter leaned close over Daniel's head, speaking into his ear. Jack wanted to pull her back, to tell her the problem was with his breathing, not his hearing, and wondered why he was feeling so irritable with her. "It's us, we're here with you; everything is going to be all right," she whispered to Daniel, and Jack knew he was being unreasonably bitchy; there was nothing wrong with what she was doing. But in truth he knew exactly what his problem was: he didn't really want the anger that would accompany the new information he'd been sent here to collect. He wanted to feel glad, relieved to have Daniel back alive; he didn't enjoy being consumed by animosity. He looked at the pinkish-yellow stain of bloody drainage on the bandages covering the back of Daniel's wrist, and at the swollen fingers, and felt his tension jolt a notch higher. He'd seen the ragged, vicious slice under those bandages before, the wound raw and bleeding and filthy with soot, and he wasn't eager to see it again now that he was about to more or less confirm how and why it had got there.  
  
There was no escaping it, though, and as the nurse cut through the bulky dressing and peeled it back only just far enough to reveal the wound, Jack concentrated on reminding himself not to curse too overly loudly when the time came. Daniel was calm, and Jack didn't want to disturb him. The exposed wound was a gaping slice over three inches long, packed with soaking wet bloody gauze. It was being left open, un-sutured, packed with saline-soaked gauze, the nurse explained, because the wound had been so dirty and there was so much swelling. Sorry about it looking so horrible, she chittered at them; it looks awful right now but once it's debrided and the swelling goes down it'll look a lot better; it should heal up nicely.  
  
That's nice, just fine, yeah, yeah, Jack thought at her repeatedly through her chatter, but she didn't seem to be receiving his brain waves so he finally had to interrupt her. "Yeah, good. That's good to hear, thanks. What we actually need to see, though, is the rest of it."  
  
She stared at him blankly, and Jack mentally cursed the doctor for not either having been there or telling the nurse just what they wanted. Carter held up her own wrist, encircling it with her thumb and forefinger. "We need to see around his wrist. Can you remove the bandages entirely?" she asked the nurse, quickly clarifying with a grimace, "The packing can stay in. Please."  
  
The nurse looked doubtful, but then shrugged a shoulder. "Oh. Well, we'll have to disturb him to replace it anyway, I guess, so we may as well do that now as later. Just let me get a new set-up before I remove the rest of the dressing, then." She gathered supplies from a large well-stocked trolley against the wall: a white-wrapped package that Jack recognised as a dressing tray; bottles of saline and some yellow disinfectant stuff; packages of gauze and gloves; a roll of tape.  
  
When she came back to the bedside and set up her supplies on the overbed table, she handed a package of gloves each to him and Carter, telling them they'd need to help her support his arm while she took off the rest of the dressing and do the same for when she put the new one on. So they did, sliding their hands under Daniel's hand and forearm where she told them, and gently lifting his arm up off the pillows so she could slide the rest of the sliced bandages out from under. Daniel weakly tried to pull back when they moved his arm, and Jack felt like an absolute heel when, as they persisted and lifted his arm high enough so they could get a good look, he grimaced around the tube and kicked out his legs in pain.  
  
It had to be done, though, because even though he didn't want to know what he knew would make him so angry as to see red, he had to find out if the doctor's impression seemed likely or not. Jack's saving grace was the understanding this would have been done anyway, if not by them, then by the nursing staff, as the dressing had to be changed regardless of his and Carter's need to see the full extent of the injury. So they held Daniel's arm up higher and for longer than was humane, and Jack's blood pressure raised to the boiling point as both he and Carter inspected the pattern of damage that indicated some sort of thin, strong ligature had been tightly tied around Daniel's wrist, taut enough that it had sliced into the skin around the sides and top of his wrist. It had fastened the underside of his arm firmly against something hard and rough enough to abrade and bruise. Unfinished metal maybe, Jack thought. A metal bar of some kind.  
  
Jack hadn't seen any blood on Sinclair's hands – anywhere at all on Sinclair, in fact, that he could recall – but the opposite was certainly true for Daniel. Teal'c had clearly said that the badly burned body of the other man was far closer to the door than where he'd found Daniel, and the actual flames hadn't reached where either of them had been lying. He could be wrong, of course, but Jack rather doubted a badly burned man would have neither the ability nor the presence of mind to do a cut and run on Daniel. Nor did he buy the possibility that the guy might have cut Daniel free and then turned around and sauntered into a wall of fire on his way to the door.  
  
Daniel had been tightly, brutally restrained by that arm, and then left in that burning building to free himself. Jack knew it. He knew it. Someone was going to have to pay for that.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Daniel's throat hurt, his chest felt tight, he had a headache to beat the band, and his fondest wish was that his entire left arm would just go away. Right from the tips of his fingers to the top of his shoulder. Turn numb, fall off, whatever it took. He didn't care how it happened so long as it did. But it wasn't going to happen, he knew that, and so he was just going to have to cope.  
  
He wished he hadn't woken up. Desperate for a distraction from the throbbing discomfort, he gazed mournfully around the small room. Out the window, a night sky lightened by the glow of streetlights; inside, past the foot of his bed, two padded chairs against the wall; beside him, the intravenous pump with its blinking green light and the bedside table with its... aw, god. That sure wasn't helpful; now he could replace "somewhat queasy" with "thoroughly nauseated" on his list of woes. Three plastic bowls full of pale yellow glop stared back at him, the long ends of their plastic spoons tilted at varying angles toward one another as if in a huddle with their backs turned. No doubt gathered together laughing at him. Very funny.  
  
In amongst thanking her, he'd tried to tell the aide who'd delivered the goods that he really didn't like banana flavoured pudding all that much, but he'd had the oxygen mask on over his face, and his throat was so sore and his voice hoarse... She must have misunderstood, as she'd cheerily told him she knew how much he liked banana cream pudding and was glad to be of help. In truth, though, he'd still been a bit drowsy at the time, so really, he could have said just about anything to her and it might've still sounded right to him. She'd raised the head of the bed a bit further than it already had been, jarring his arm in the process, and happily trundled off leaving him at eye level with the purple and pink abstract art masterpiece hung halfway up the wall opposite him.  
  
Really, though, the awful instant pudding didn't bear sole responsibility for how all-around terrible he felt. He held the oxygen mask over his mouth and nose with his right hand, ignoring the cool droplets of condensation that ran down his face under the mask. It was partly his headache, and partly because the drugs he'd been given to keep him nicely tranq'd up while he'd had that damn tube in his throat were wearing off – unremitting pain didn't exactly inspire a hale and hearty spirit. He suspected it was also partly an after-effect of fear, as well, because although he couldn't really say just why, even in his still half-drugged state he'd been scared shitless enough during the extubation that he'd immediately thrown up out of fear the second they'd got it out. The shakiness accompanying that reaction was still with him now, many hours and a solid nap later.  
  
A knock turned his attention to the doorway, where Jack suddenly stood with a tall, cold-looking drink container in his hand. Daniel remembered being told Jack was waiting outside the ICU while the tube was being removed, and a few hours or so ago he'd been aware of Jack silently walking alongside his bed as they'd transferred him, lock stock and barrel, to this private room in a regular unit. Now here Jack was again, waggling the large cup at him, teasing him with it, and Daniel was more than happy to be teased just so long as he didn't have to do anything in return. He was far too dragged-out to entertain anyone.  
  
This really was very thoughtful of Jack, though, and he did appreciate it. They'd wanted him to drink when he got to his new home, and he'd done his best. He'd tried water, and juice, but he kept choking on the fluids and the nurse had considered the problem, announcing it was probably due to how irritated his pharynx was. She’d suggested that something thicker might go down better and had given him a god-awful tasting liquid food supplement to try. He hadn’t choked on it, but it had been a near thing, and not because of the consistency. His head had decided it was time for a nap after that minor trauma, and when he'd woken a bit ago Jack hadn't been there anymore.  
  
Jack came in and put the cup down on the bedside table next to the trio of laughing maidens. "Here you go. Just what the doctor ordered: a banana milkshake."  
  
Daniel groaned at the lame joke, partly out of mental pain and partly out of appreciation for the attempt to cheer him up. Jack was working pretty hard at being considerate; Daniel had been aware of that since he'd become alert enough to even realise that Jack was there. That was nice of Jack, but it was a bad thing too, because it probably meant there was some difficult stuff on the way that Jack was procrastinating over bringing up. Daniel really didn't want to think about the difficult stuff; he didn't want to know. And he didn't want to tell, either. It was too soon, yes, everything that had happened and all that he'd felt while it was happening still being far too close to the surface to deal with right now, but that wasn't really the reason. It just wasn't going to happen, and as far as he was concerned Jack didn't need to know any of the whys and wherefores.  
  
Jack popped the plastic top off the container for him, and Daniel was both pleased and concerned to see the milkshake was chocolate. He really liked chocolate, but it’d make quite a mess when he threw it up. Vanilla probably would have been a lot less potentially offensive.  
  
He put the oxygen mask aside for the moment anyway, and took a tentative sip of the shake. It seemed to go all right at first in that he didn’t choke on it on the way down, but once it got where it was going it sat there like a well packed snowball, and he decided he probably wasn't going to do very well at this self-hydration stuff just yet. The intravenous wasn’t coming out until all the rounds of antibiotics were done with anyway, so aside from feeling guilty over Jack having run out especially to get this for him, Daniel wasn't all that particularly motivated. He did take another sip, though, forcing it down because he really didn’t want to seem ungrateful, but unfortunately that coincided with an urge to cough, and he spluttered some of it right back out, wheezing.  
  
Jack took it away from him, and handed the oxygen mask to him in its place. "You don't have to drink it if you don't feel well enough for it, Daniel." He looked Daniel up and down. "If anything, you look even more like shit now that you're wide awake than you did when you were half knocked out. How's the arm?"  
  
The arm? It hurt. Daniel glanced down at where it rested beside him on a stack of pillows. "It's all right," he lied to Jack, his voice raspy. "Bandages need changing," he added unnecessarily. That was pretty obvious, as the drainage from what he'd done to himself had penetrated the layers and layers of gauze to appear in slowly spreading spots on the outer dressing.  
  
Jack looked at his watch. "Yeah. The nurse has said she'd be in at about nine o'clock to change the dressing and get you settled for the night. That's in half an hour." He dragged one of the chairs over to beside the bed and sat down, sipping at the milkshake. " You okay tonight? I can stay."  
  
Daniel frowned. No, he wasn't okay, but he didn't need nor want babysitting, and he was a bit worried about why Jack had just said that. The oxygen mask was right there in his hand, spitting reams of cool mist that would be so easy to hide behind, but instead he swallowed a bit of pride and with his throat stinging from saying so many words at once, warily asked, "Uh, so just what did I do last night? Nothing too embarrassing, I hope."  
  
Jack stilled, sitting motionless, staring at him with an odd expression on his face. After a moment during which Daniel wondered just how wigged out he might have been, Jack leaned forward and quietly told him, "You almost died in a fire, Daniel."  
  
Ah. Yes. That. Daniel tried to cough away the sudden lump in his throat and decided he really did need that oxygen after all. He shook his head, waving his right hand in a negative. No, that was all right, he'd be fine. Okay, well, no, not fine really, of course, but he was probably better off alone. Just in case he did something stupid and embarrassing, like... like, well gee, just like this. He tossed the mask away and swiped at his eyes, noticing with disgust that his hand was shaking.  
  
Jack put the milkshake on the bedside table. Staring steadily at Daniel, he leaned forward again, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. "Daniel."  
  
Angry, Daniel swiped hard at his eyes once more. "What, Jack, what?" His throat wouldn't allow the volume his emotions demanded, and he winced at both the soreness and the weak sound of the attempt.  
  
"You tell me." Jack tipped his head slightly, waiting.  
  
"What did Sinclair tell you? Why don't you just go have this conversation with him." Leave me alone, Jack. Just leave it all alone.  
  
"Nothing. And this isn't about him, Daniel, it's about you. You're falling apart here, and don't give me any crap about your arm or your lungs. That's not where the problem is."  
  
Daniel wasn't sure how to feel about the response. Sinclair telling the story wouldn't change what Daniel wanted to do with it all, but it would at least have got everyone off his back. To a point, this wasn't his decision to make, it was Sinclair's, and Jack wasn't going to bully anything out of him no matter how he framed the reason for his interest. He couldn't do it. He couldn't, wouldn't, be the one to do that to her name, not unless he really had no other choice.  
  
"No problem, Jack. There's nothing to tell."  
  
"I'm still waiting," Jack said, and then seemed to reconsider. "Or, we can do it this way: how about instead of telling, you ask."  
  
There was nothing to tell, and nothing to ask. He was sick, was all. It wasn't like he didn't have good reason to feel like crap. He said it, even though he knew it wasn't true, because it was time for Jack to go away now. "No, I'm good, nothing worth saying. I'll be fine tonight. Thanks for the concern."  
  
"You're good." Jack sat back, leaving his hands loose in his lap. "You're deluded, is what you are. Daniel, you do realise that tomorrow there's going to be a whole passel of strangers in suits coming in here expecting you to tell them everything, don't you? You can't hide from this. They're going to come in here and question you to within an inch of your life, and you're just going to have to cope with it, because I can't stop it. Not even sure I want to. We need to know what happened."  
  
Oh god. Daniel closed his eyes. "Nothing to tell."  
  
He heard Jack shift in the chair. Heard the tap, tap, tap of Jack's thumb against the wooden armrest. "I beg to differ, Daniel," Jack finally responded. "There's lots to tell, like why you ended up where you were, and what happened there. Like why Teal'c had to pull you out of a burning building..."  
  
What? Daniel jerked forward in surprise, and his arm screamed in protest against the movement. For a long few moments he was incapable of rational thought, the fire shooting up his arm taking over. He curled around the pain, grunting and wheezing it out, and it gradually settled to the point that he remembered what had brought on the flare-up.  
  
He stared at Jack, his eyes and lungs burning in the aftermath, his wrist throbbing. "What did you say?"  
  
Jack looked confused. "Which, what?"  
  
Oh, please Jack. No games. Daniel bit his lip, wanting but then again not wanting to hear it again. Jack frowned at him, looking more concerned now than confused. "Daniel? What's wrong?"  
  
What's wrong? Daniel laughed out loud, his irritated throat lending the short bark of disbelief a raw, desperate quality. Teal'c? Teal'c had got him out? Suddenly an awful thought, a terrible explanation, struck him hard, driving icicles into his gut. Last man standing; god, no, not again. He clutched the metal side-rail of the bed, forcing the words out. "Jack. Jack, Sinclair, is he... did he..."  
  
Jack was there in an instant, bending over him, picking up the oxygen mask and holding it close to his mouth. "Breathe, Daniel. Relax. It's okay." Daniel knocked the mask away. He didn't need oxygen, he needed to know about Sinclair, and Mavis, too. Teal'c, Teal'c, Teal'c got me out, his mind chanted at him. Teal'c, not Sinclair. Why? Because Ray Sinclair had promised, he'd promised, and so he was dead, oh, they were all dead, all of them, and he was trapped and the flames and smoke were all around him, and he was going to burn too if he couldn't bring himself to slice his own wrist open.  
  
He came back slowly, confused and in pain: needles of pain in his left arm, feeling a damp, cold pressure on his face and something else tight around his other arm. There were voices he couldn't make sense of, high and low pitched bubbles of sound right next to him. Oh. Oh, it was Jack. And a nurse? Yes. She was taking his blood pressure. His head pounded, and when he opened his eyes his vision swam, making him dizzy. Or maybe it was the other way around.  
  
"Oh, there he is. Good." The nurse unwrapped the cuff from his arm. Something was pinching his finger, and Daniel only realised it was a pulse oximeter sensor when she took it off, saying, "His levels are good, but it's probably wise to leave the oxygen on for a bit." She touched his shoulder, and he looked at her. "Hello," she smiled at him. "Are you feeling better? You had a bit of a spell there; you passed out for a minute." She leaned in, whispering, "I think you scared your friend."  
  
Oh, sorry. Sorry about that. Closing his eyes, Daniel nodded at her, yes, he was fine now, thanks. On her way out, he heard her tell Jack she'd get a doctor's order to put him back on a heart monitor for the night just to be on the safe side, and he groaned to himself. Stupid, stupid. He felt another hand on his arm, and Jack was there, telling him with a light touch that it was all right, that he understood this, knew what this was. It was all right. But it wasn't all right, and Daniel realised Jack had been on target with his intuition that Daniel had questions of his own that had to be asked.  
  
"He didn't come back for me." That wasn't a question anymore, but it had spawned another and Daniel knew he had to have the answer, not only because by tomorrow morning he needed to have got his shit together, but also, and primarily, because now that he knew things hadn't gone as he'd assumed, hiding from the answers meant he might never get over this. He'd always wonder, always worry about whether or not what he'd already decided to do was the right thing. He forced himself to come right out and ask it. "Why? Did he... is he dead?"  
  
Jack's quiet answer, "No. He's very much alive, Daniel. He's fine," spawned yet another question, and this was one Daniel really, really didn't want anything to do with. But then Jack gave him an out, handing him more information, telling him that Mavis Sinclair had died – acute pulmonary edema, nothing anyone could have done under those circumstances. Her body couldn't handle it, her already failing heart and lungs unable to compensate for the stress and the smoke. Daniel willingly hid his sense of betrayal and his fear for his own future behind that fresh knowledge, that grief and regret, and Jack let him, patting him once on the shoulder and telling him, all right, all right then, he'd do his best to hold off the questing hordes in the morning. But no promises.  
  
Jack gently told him he had better get his shit together before they came and tried to tear his version of events apart. They were dealing with the former President of the United States here, and there were people out there who'd want to make sure things went the way they wanted them to, no matter the truth or the trauma.  
  
Well, Jack didn't know it, but he was wrong in being right, because Daniel himself was one of those people. Sinclair hadn't said anything yet, and until he did, Daniel was going to be completely indistinguishable from a clam. No matter the truth or the trauma.  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Ridiculous, stupid, nonsensical... if this wasn't the most absolutely bone-headed, aggravating stunt Daniel had pulled to date, Jack didn't know what would be. Most of Daniel's more maddening exploits turned out to be toward some good end or another, but not this one. No way. The only end Jack could envision this one moving toward was the loss of Daniel's reputation and any hope of his continued participation in the Stargate program. Maybe even the loss of his freedom, if things really went sideways.  
  
Daniel wasn't co-operating. Not talking. Nothing, nil, zilch, de nada. He wasn't even bothering with trying out semi-plausibles such as "I don't remember" or cough, splutter, sore throat, wheeze, can't talk ploys. He just flat out, plain old wasn't talking. Not to anyone, and most infuriating of all was that he was even refusing to tell Jack why he wasn't talking. If he at least could confirm for Jack there was a good reason, that'd be enough. Okay, well, no it wouldn't be enough, but it'd be enough of a start that Jack would do his level best to support Daniel. But he wasn't being given that opportunity. Daniel had shut him out as ruthlessly as he had the black suits and the local police, and it was pretty much at the point now where Jack wasn't going to be able to protect him from the inevitable charge of failure to co-operate that was fast on the way.  
  
Sinclair wasn't much better, although he had provided some vague answers. Jack's hands itched, he wanted so badly to get more than just vague recollections out of Sinclair. But he'd been closed out, denied access to the man for over three days now since the fire, while infuriatingly enough Sinclair's own people, plus a gaggle of others with equally self-serving agendas, had wide open and unremitting access to Daniel. It was doing them just about as much good as Jack's access to Sinclair was doing him, of course, but still, the overt and unjust inequality was galling. It wasn't just that, though, that was eating at Jack. Daniel was as stoic as his physical condition allowed for and intent on tuning the demands for information out, but Jack could see he was suffering under the assault and there wasn't a damned thing Jack could do to help until Daniel decided to let him in.  
  
Hammond had shared what he could, though; Hammond could be really good or really stingy with sharing, depending on the circumstances and his mood, and this time he was hovering somewhere in the middle. He wouldn't tell Jack where Sinclair was since he'd left the hospital, nor anything he might know about the status or results of the investigation into the fire. But he'd told Jack what Sinclair was saying, and he'd made certain to formally order Jack to quietly, discreetly pass the information on to Daniel. That he'd made that an order suggested to Jack that either Hammond just might know something in particular about Daniel's silence or that he approved of it, but that was another one of the things it didn't look like Hammond was going to be willing to share anytime soon.  
  
Apparently Sinclair told the suits and the police that he'd only just come home to find Daniel visiting with his wife and her driver in the old groundskeeper's building, and there was a fire. Peter smoked and was careless; Peter had probably tossed a cigarette, Sinclair thought. He remembered Peter trying to put the fire out and catching fire himself, which was just awful, horrible to witness. Sinclair had tried to get his wife out in time, but he'd failed and she died, she died.  
  
That was about it. Other than that, Sinclair had nothing to say. No, he didn't know the details about how Daniel had got there, nor why. No, he didn't remember anything about anything else. It was all a blur; he didn't remember, didn't know. Daniel possibly being restrained to something? What? No, he didn't remember anything other than what he'd told them, except that he remembered that his wife had died in his arms, gasping for breath with foam filling her mouth and nose. He remembered that with absolute clarity, each second of every minute of every hour since it had happened.  
  
Yeah, well, Daniel may not have lost a wife in that fire, but Jack figured Daniel must have some pretty damned unpleasant memories too. Daniel wasn't asking anyone to let him hide behind them, was he? At least Daniel's refusal to say anything meant he was taking responsibility for his decision; Sinclair was passing that off onto his dead wife, and Jack found that offensive. He was fast losing all respect for Sinclair, if the truth be known, because if Sinclair had at least been truthful about the parts he had told them, then there was a far worse crime to consider than Sinclair manipulating the memory of his dead wife to protect himself. He'd said Peter had been burned trying to put out the fire, and in that he'd inadvertently confirmed Daniel had in fact been left to his own devices in that burning building. Whether Sinclair admitted to knowing about it or not, it was clear Daniel had been restrained. He had been tied to something immovable and left on his own to free himself and get out however he could, if he could. Judging from the panic attack and flashback Daniel'd had when Jack told him Teal'c was the one who had rescued him, and what Daniel had said about a promise, Sinclair had been the one to leave him there.  
  
Jack stormed about in the hotel room in his underwear as the shower steamed the wrinkles out of the only clean pair of non-dress uniform pants he had with him, going through it all in his mind over and over again. He was frustrated beyond belief, and feeling a bit hurt, too, if he was honest with himself, but that wasn't important. He knew Daniel's silence with him wasn't personal. There was something important enough to Daniel going on here that he felt this was the best he could do. He was probably protecting someone or something, but the thought Daniel would do that for the very man who'd organised his kidnapping and then left him to die by fire was beyond Jack's understanding.  
  
Jack wanted to trust Daniel, he really did, but it was damned hard to get past all the synonyms for stupid, pig-headed, and aggravating that kept popping into his head. He was also very, very concerned for Daniel's future. With both Daniel and Sinclair stonewalling, each in their own way, it wasn't difficult to imagine which of them might come out smelling best after the dirty laundry handlers had finished sorting and washing.  
  
The telephone rang, and Jack hesitated to answer it. He stood there letting it ring and go to the answering service, but he knew he'd have to check the message right away. His cellphone was turned off, just finishing recharging, so at least he'd have a few minutes of peace before he had to check and see if this was the call he'd been hoping to duck for as long as possible. He'd been anticipating a call forcing him back to the SGC, and he wasn't ready to go back there quite yet. He was in command of the SGC, and the stubborn side of him insisted that he should be left alone to exercise his command from wherever he saw fit, whether that be from within Cheyenne Mountain, from here in Washington, or from number 11 Munchkinville Lane in the Land of Oz. The less rash side of him knew that wasn't an even remotely realistic expectation.  
  
He went to the washroom, taking the time to relieve himself and wash his hands and face, and then picked up the phone to check the message, even though what he most dearly wanted to do was lie down and take a mid-afternoon nap. He hadn't been sleeping well. But, it could be the SGC with an emergency or it could be the hospital about Daniel, so he couldn't ignore it. The first was more likely than the second, because he'd visited Daniel this morning and although still in pain from that arm, Daniel was recovering well. His lungs were in good shape and the medications he was on for the bronchitis that had developed were helping.  
  
Two or three more days, the doctor had told Jack; Daniel could be discharged in a few days, once the IV antibiotics were through and they'd debrided and sutured the still open wound in his arm. That debridement was happening tomorrow morning under anaesthetic, Jack remembered, and made a mental note to be sure to call Carter and Teal'c at the SGC afterwards to let them know how Daniel was doing, provided of course Jack himself was still here to find that out. The doctor had also advised that Daniel shouldn't fly just yet, upon his discharge, and Carter had been ecstatic, asking for the time off to bring Daniel home via a relaxed road trip. Jack thought that was a great idea.  
  
He grimaced as General Hammond's recorded voice played back to him on the telephone, thinking this was the call he'd been hoping wouldn't come. The SGC was coping fine with the day to day stuff without him there, and... what? Okay, no, maybe that wasn't why Hammond had called, because he was being asked to go over to Hammond's office at three o'clock precisely. Not to be late, because it was important. And, oh, call to confirm that he got the message, right away. Jack checked his watch, and wondered what the hell, because it was already almost two-thirty. Something late-breaking, he figured, and pulled on his dress pants, casting about for his socks. Wait, call to confirm, right. He did that, leaving a message with Hammond's assistant, and then hastily put on the rest of his clothes. He was down in the lobby when he realised he'd forgotten his cellphone, and had to go back for it, knowing that might make him a few minutes late but not wanting to risk being incommunicado if anything were to change or the SGC did need him.  
  
Traffic was bad and he was late by over ten minutes. As he was ushered past a couple of black-suited, stone-faced Larry and Moes standing outside the door to Hammond's inner office, he realised that it wasn't just something late-breaking that had pulled him here, but something unusual as well. Hammond didn't normally have his office decorated in late-style spook chic. He was let in, and immediately came to a startled halt while only just a half-step inside the office.  
  
"Well, finally. That probably wasn't the best career move you've ever made, General." President Hayes stood leaning against the far wall, his arms folded across his chest. He turned his attention elsewhere right away, though, and Jack followed the direction of his gaze to see Ray Sinclair seated on one of the two chairs facing General Hammond's desk. Hammond himself was standing just to one side of Sinclair.  
  
The door closed behind Jack, and the President took the chair next to Sinclair. "All right, Ray. Now can we do whatever it is you insisted on us coming here for? Or, are we waiting for a national television camera crew?"  
  
Jack winced right along with Hammond at the acidic tone of voice Hayes had used. Sinclair did more than just flinch, sagging in his seat and placing a hand over his eyes. Jack was both surprised and baffled when Hayes abruptly dropped the attitude and leaned forward in evident, but all the same presidentially stately, concern. "Okay, that was uncalled for. But I don't think it's unreasonable for me to be concerned that you feel you can't just come talk to me alone." He waved a hand toward Hammond, then toward Jack, and his tone changed again, this time probing and wary. "What are you doing, Ray? What is it you want witnesses for?"  
  
"The whole truth." Sinclair dropped the hand, and swivelled in his seat to look directly at Hayes. "All of it."  
  
Hayes stared back at him for a second and then groaned. "Nothing has to change here, Ray. We've put Dr. Jackson through the wringer over the last two days. His continued silence shows he's perfectly willing to –"  
  
"I'm not willing! I can't do this," Sinclair cried out, jumping up from his seat so quickly it startled Jack, and when his head jerked up to meet Hammond's eyes across the room he saw the same grim confusion and anger there that he was feeling. Hammond had no more idea what was going on here than Jack did. That was reassuring, actually, because whatever political mess was about to unfold here, Jack would have hated to think Hammond had an active part in it.  
  
"Ray. Calm down." Hayes seemed frustrated, but there was a faint air of acceptance there too, as if he'd already known this was going to happen, whatever this was. "Take a bit more time to think about it, all right? There are thing we can do to fix this. Nothing's changed..."  
  
Sinclair interrupted him, more under control but just as firm in his denial. "No, Rob. Everything's changed. Everything." He walked a small, anxious circle. "I didn't understand, before. It didn't even occur to me what I had done to... oh, Jesus. Look, I can't do this. I didn't understand what we were really doing here, but Dr. Jackson... Mavis, she..."  
  
He trailed off, taking a deep breath, and Hammond took the opportunity to ask what the hell was going on. "Excuse me, Sir," he said to Hayes. "Am I to understand from the sub-text here that you know more about Dr. Jackson's abduction than the rest of us have been told?"  
  
Good question, great question, let's hear that answer, folks, Jack thought, following Hayes with his eyes as the President got up out of the chair and walked over to stand behind Hammond's desk. He picked at stuff on the desk, turning a page over here and there, picking up a pen and putting it down, but not answering.  
  
"Yes." Sinclair answered it, a hint of defiance in his voice that made Hayes look up at him. "He knows everything, even though he tried his best not to be told. Plausible deniability, he was thinking, in case the whole truth ever came out and political and public perception turned against me."  
  
Political and public perception turning against him? That was it, the sum total of their concern over Sinclair bearing responsibility for his role in kidnapping and almost killing a man? Jack was flabbergasted. What about, oh, the law? What about...  
  
"Don't look at me that way, O'Neill." Sinclair stood tall, facing him down. "It's not what you think. I'm not the one..." He faltered, but then pushed on. "I'm not responsible for Dr. Jackson being kidnapped. I know what it looks like, and I realise I've been a, a coward, in not clearing this up before now. But I didn't do it."  
  
Oh, Jack didn't think the cowardly part was his not clearing up that he wasn't responsible, but instead, was not admitting he was. What Sinclair had just spit out made no more sense than anything else that had been said here to this point, and Jack knew the expression on his face was doing all the talking for him that he couldn't come right out with given his lowly status here. He didn't believe a word of this bullshit. Sinclair was going to have to do a lot better than this.  
  
President Hayes shook his head in exasperation as he looked at Jack. "Your righteous indignation is lighting up the room, General. Imagine, all that and with nothing to go on." He turned to Sinclair. "I'm not very clear on what you think you're going to get out of this, Ray. Absolution? Punishment?" He gestured toward Jack. "What do you want from him? From me?"  
  
Sinclair seemed surprised. "What? No, I don't want anything from him. Just the opposite. And I think you probably already know what I want from you." Sinclair took a single step forward, reaching out in entreaty. "Do you really want to see the Stargate program under the control of people who think nothing of callously flouting the very values they claim to uphold? Squandering Earth's most important resources in the name of... what? You tell me, Rob: in the name of what?"  
  
Across from Jack, Hammond straightened up noticeably. Jack was tuning in to the specific frequency of the background hum better now as well. There'd been loads of clues right from the start that this conversation had involved more than just the story behind Daniel's abduction, but where they were headed had been beyond him to this point. He understood now, though. How could he not. "The whole truth," Sinclair had said. Well, that was one pretty big whole, all right: the Stargate itself.  
  
Hayes' reaction was swift. "Whoa there." He held up a hand in a cautionary gesture. "You might want to take a step back here while you still can, Ray. Things will look different later; this is grief talking. You're not thinking clearly."  
  
It was the wrong thing to say. Jack could have told the man that even before it had been said. He shifted uncomfortably as Sinclair's face grew progressively more stony as the seconds passed. When it came, Sinclair's response was controlled, delivered in a carefully measured tone that left no doubt as to just how clearly he was capable of thinking. "You're right, it is grief that's driving this. Not in the way you think, though. What Mavis did and why she did it woke me up, Rob, and if anything I'm thinking more clearly now than I have at any point during the last three months."  
  
Jack felt his mouth hanging open. Okay, so that's not what he expected. What she did? Was he saying what Jack... oh, wait, there was more, the surprises coming one after the other now as Sinclair turned to Hammond, apologising, "George, I'm sorry. I abused your trust. You came to me asking for my support of the proposal to recognise Daniel Jackson, and I took advantage of it. Of you. Of him." He shook his head, spitting the words out as if they were laced with bitter apple. "I was ambitious. The Stargate isn't something easy to walk away from. My term in office may have ended, but my drive to stay involved didn't. I wanted more, but I was a has-been, old news. There wasn't a place for me any longer."  
  
Ah, so you made one, Jack thought. Sinclair hadn't just taken advantage of them and Daniel, but also of Hayes himself, using Hayes' worries about the increasing difficulty in managing the secrecy of the Stargate, and the current administrations desire to retain control, to shore up the foundations of a brave new plan. Jack couldn't keep his tongue any longer, rank and protocol be damned. "You've been working on a plan for a manipulated release of information, haven't you?" He glared first at Sinclair and then at Hayes. "You want to strategically control the way and how much the world finds out about the existence of the Stargate. That's what you wanted to use Daniel for. To lie for you."  
  
"No, not to lie." Hayes was offended. "To represent the best the program has to offer."  
  
"To subvert the very best the program has to offer," Sinclair shot back, and in the process reclaimed a bit of the respect for him that Jack had thrown away.  
  
Hayes stood silently for a moment, and then quietly asked, "Why do you care so much, all of a sudden, what use we put Jackson to? I'm pretty certain if you were to ask Jackson himself he'd tell you the bigger picture is far more important than the daily life of one man. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs."  
  
Oh for... Jack almost swore out loud but bit his tongue just in the nick of time. He could taste and feel the words sitting on his tongue, and had a lot of trouble swallowing them. This was the President and Jack had a duty to him which he wouldn't, couldn't, ignore nor abandon, but he didn't have to like what he'd just done. He was grateful when Hammond tried to object, starting out with the standard "with all due respect" disclaimer, but Sinclair interrupted him with a raised hand.  
  
"No, George. I did this; it's up to me to fix it." He walked a route that led him around the chairs and over to the door, restless and upset, and then asked Hayes, "Let me ask you this, Rob. How can anyone who thinks nothing of destroying the spirit of one of the very best Earth has to offer, claim to hold moral and ethical values that make them the best choice to decide what's right on behalf of the people of Earth?"  
  
"Fair enough," Hayes said gently after a moment, and Jack started to suspect that at least a portion of this discussion had been academic on Hayes' part, rather than an expression of honestly held objections. He sure hoped the facetious comment equating Daniel to an egg to be casually broken and thrown out, as just one out of a million identically disposal eggs, was one such portion.  
  
Hayes walked around the desk and over to the door, touching Sinclair on the arm. "Fair enough," he repeated. "But you don't have to do this, Ray. Like I said before, nothing has to change. You aren't involved because of some misbegotten sense of charity. I agreed that when the time is right the program will need you, that we will need you, and I still believe that."  
  
"Generals," Hayes nodded at Jack and Hammond. "Nothing leaves this room, do you understand? Except me, right now." He opened the door and was gone, leaving the three of them to stand in uncomfortable silence.  
  
It was broken by Sinclair, standing straight and looking each of them in the eye even though his voice shook. "What do you want to know?"  
  
"Everything," Jack told him. "Everything."  
  


* * *

  
  
  
Three down, one to go. Daniel flexed the fingers of his left hand, feeling the tendons in his wrist stretch uncomfortably. The physiotherapist had suggested the cumbersome brace he'd been wearing on his wrist for the last three weeks could be put aside in about another week. He'd slowly been decreasing the amount of time he'd been wearing it, and while he still had it on through each night, as long as he was careful, the time he could go without it during each day was steadily increasing.  
  
Her warning that he shouldn't take his recent progress for granted was unnecessary; it was still sore enough that he didn't need any outside reminders of just how badly he'd ripped the crap out of it. Once the swelling from the severe sprain had gone down the knife wound had begun to heal nicely, not looking or feeling nearly so angry anymore. The tendons and ligaments were going to take considerably longer, though. Still, as the days passed he was increasingly more able to use his left hand and arm without suffering too many setbacks, and was grateful for that.  
  
Gulping down the dregs of his morning cup of coffee, he checked the clock on the stove and decided he had enough time to check his e-mail before his ride showed up. He placed the empty cup into the sink, centered under the tap, and splashed a bit of water in it. Leaving it there, he made his way over to the computer and brought up the login screen. If he was quick, he could get to the mail before the airman arrived and possibly even have a chance to browse the linguistic journal abstracts before they headed out to the mountain. He'd enjoyed the extra time he'd had over the last ten days to catch up on what was going on in the world in his chosen fields of study. He certainly never wanted to repeat the events that had resulted in him having the time off to do that, but he'd spent the downtime profitably, at least from his point of view.  
  
It was time to get back to work, though; time to concentrate on the distractions of other-worldly attractions rather than trying to lose himself in a revival of out-dated, past interests. He'd been in to the SGC part-time on each of the past four days, and today was going to be his first full day back. Surprisingly, he had mixed feelings about that. It was like home to him, and he loved being in his office surrounded by some of the fruits of the SGC teams' adventures. He enjoyed attending the planning briefings, reviewing the MALP tapes, and consulting with Sam and the other scientists on their findings. But, unhappily, he wasn't nearly as eager as he thought he'd be to get back to it all, the vague sense of impending displacement that was dogging him tainting his days with doubt and apprehension.  
  
Stop. Just stop it. They'd do whatever they decided to do with him, whenever they decided to do it. He had no control over that – and hey, wasn't that just the central problem – and he should just let it go; stop thinking about it. That was easier said than done, though, now that he was going in to the SGC rather than sitting at home reading journal articles and polishing up his linguistic analysis skills. But never mind. Just carry on. And speaking of carrying on...  
  
Daniel entered the secure system and accessed his personal mail. There were six new messages in his inbox, plus fourteen that had been automatically shunted into his junk folder. He imagined that a couple of those were probably from Bregman, as had been the case almost daily since Sam had brought Daniel home two weeks ago. He felt guilty over having set up the filters to weed out Bregman's attempts to pin him down to a day and time for filming an insert. Daniel knew Bregman was delaying the final edits on his production in the hopes that Daniel would sit down in front of the camera, but then again that was Bregman's problem, not his, wasn't it? It wasn't as if he hadn't already told the man he'd prefer not to do it if he didn't absolutely have to.  
  
There was one from Jack, asking him to come down to Jack's office when he arrived at the SGC. Sure, he could do that. Sam had written welcoming him back to the daily grind, and confirming the time of that afternoon's department heads meeting, which was nice because it saved him the trouble of tracking down that bit of information for himself. What was that one? He didn't recognise the third sender e-mail address staring at him from the details column, and wondered if it might be an escapee from his work ID, sent to his personal box by mistake by one of the admin assistants or someone from some other department somewhere.  
  
He opened it, reading the first line that said the sender hoped he was recovering well, and it took him a moment to realise what this was. Who it must be from. In that moment he felt frozen in place and time, as if everything, including the firing of the synapses in his brain, had just abruptly stopped dead in its tracks. Slowly, creeping through his insides like a worm making its way through an apple, understanding and reaction set in and he felt hot and cold and faintly nauseated with dread. Against his wishes, his eyes scanned the short message without actually registering the words, and came to rest on the sender's name at the end. The jolt of denial that hit him as he actually read Ray Sinclair's name was so strong that it sent him pushing back from the desk, rearing up so fast that he knocked his chair over.  
  
"Whoa! Hey..." The unexpected voice and the rapid footsteps from behind him followed the crash of his chair by only a scant instant and escalated his reaction to one of near-panic. Daniel quickly spun around, almost losing his balance, his right hand raised to ward off whatever new threat had just appeared. "Hey, hey, Daniel, settle down." It was Jack, just Jack, standing in front of him now, reaching out and grabbing his extended arm, steadying him.  
  
Jack glanced at the computer screen, too far away to actually be able to read anything, but recognising the webmail screen. "What's the matter? Gee, if you really don't want to come to my office, you don't have to, okay? It's not worth having a stroke over." He leaned closer to the screen, reading the message there, and grimaced. "Oh. I see. That's too bad."  
  
Daniel caught his breath, coming down from his reaction to the unexpected invasion. Ah, right, and about that... "Jack, what are you doing? How did you get in here?"  
  
Jack straightened up. "The door was unlocked." He sounded a bit on the defensive side.  
  
"No it wasn't." Daniel was quite clear on having locked his front door last night. "How did you get in here?" he repeated, and Jack went from sounding defensive to looking outright guilty. "You didn't force the door or break the lock, did you?" Daniel looked over toward the front of the house, considering the feasibility of castration with a letter opener if his door or lock had so much as a scratch on them.  
  
The guilt morphed into aggrieved offence. "No. I would never do that, Daniel."  
  
Oh, perfect. "You forced a window." But at least he wasn't going to have to call in a locksmith before he could leave the house. Now the question to be answered was, why?  
  
Jack toed the carpet. "Maybe. Just a little." Then he looked up, serious and concerned. "You didn't answer the door, Daniel. I rang the bell a few times. Thought there might be something wrong."  
  
Ah. So he'd probably been frozen in time there for longer than just a second or two, Daniel realised, and started to feel a bit foolish. But then again that didn't really explain what Jack was doing at his house at six a.m. in the first place. He didn't have to ask, though, because Jack was ready with the explanation. "The flu bug has taken out enough guys over the last couple of days that I couldn't spare anyone to come pick you up this morning. I have to get in there, so I hope you're pretty much ready to go."  
  
He twiddled his fingers toward the computer, silently asking about shutting it down, and then didn't wait for an answer. Before he could get to the mouse, though, Daniel reached forward to intercept him. "Hey, don't touch my computer. Having you destroy a window is bad enough." He looked at the screen, and something hit him. Overtop of Jack's denial that he'd hardly destroyed the window, he'd just jimmied it open was all, Daniel asked him, "What did you mean, 'that's too bad' – what's too bad?"  
  
It took Jack a second to recall his own comment, and then he looked uncomfortable. "That," he waved a hand at the message on the screen. "That he did that. I wanted to talk to you about it first."  
  
Ah. Flu bug, eh? Jack could be so full of shit sometimes. What was wrong with him just admitting right off the top that he was here to drive Daniel in to the SGC because he'd wanted to use the time to talk to Daniel? Yes, Jack was well aware that the Sinclairs and the events of his abduction were off-limit topics, but if he was going to trap him in a car and do it regardless, he didn't need a lame cover story to get Daniel into the car. Suggesting Starbucks on the way in would have done the trick. Of course, now Starbucks was mandatory, and Jack was paying.  
  
Suddenly Daniel realised he hadn't even actually read Sinclair's message yet. If it involved something that Jack felt he had to come over at six in the morning to prepare Daniel for, maybe he had better see what it said. A chill settled into the pit of his stomach as it occurred to him that this was it; this was probably the day he was getting his walking papers. Maybe Sinclair knew something Daniel didn't, and had written him about it in some misguided attempt to show some compassion and assuage his own guilt in the process. Well, Daniel wasn't interested in being in any way part of how Sinclair addressed his guilt. And suddenly he wasn't interested in what Jack wanted either. He just wanted to go back to bed, not to have to face the day, because even the thought of being removed from the SGC, never mind facing the reality of it, was too hot to handle right now.  
  
But Jack was sliding his hand underneath Daniel's own to take the mouse and close the program. Despite not having read the message, Daniel let him, feeling that vague feeling of displacement that had been dogging him blossoming into a full-fledged, painful sense of alienation. Seeming to sense his mood, Jack made no demands of him other than that they get going, silently shadowing Daniel as he collected his wallet and keys, carefully slid his left arm into the sleeve of his coat, and locked up the house as they left.  
  
Three streets over, Jack's truck crawling through the school zone nearest Daniel's house, Jack finally broke the silence. "I need to talk to you about it, Daniel. It's past time to deal with it all, anyway."  
  
Daniel looked out Jack's window at the deserted school parking lot. "The school zone speed limit isn't in force this early, Jack."  
  
The truck swung sharply to the left so suddenly that Daniel almost banged his head on his side window. They lurched to a stop in the parking lot, the seatbelt digging in across his shoulder and chest as he was momentarily thrown forward, and Jack was abruptly spitting frustration at him. "Damn it, Daniel, I've really had enough of this. It's been three weeks; how much longer did you intend for this to go on? No, wait, never mind what you intended, because I've got to tell you, if you don't stop the dead man walking routine in the next ten seconds, I'm going to pull out my weapon and end the misery right here and now."  
  
The tirade ended with the gearshift being slammed into park, and Jack turned the truck off and yanked the keys out of the ignition. He sat there for a moment that was not nearly long enough for Daniel to even begin to recover his wits, and then more calmly told him, "We're sitting right here until we deal with this crap, Daniel. No more saying 'No thanks I'd rather not', no more turning your back and walking out of the room. This time, you're going to sit and listen to what you haven't let me tell you for the last three weeks, and I hope, Daniel, I hope to god that you'll tell me what the hell is eating at you."  
  
What's eating at him? Why, try impending re-assignment to Washington, Jack. Try the thought of being put into the position of being forced to proselytise a party line that he didn't agree with? Being forced to actively participate in and propagate an agenda that would lead him farther and farther away from the SGC and his friends, and all that he really believed in? Try that no one seemed to even care that this was happening to him. He was going to explode. Jack was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel, and the noise was driving him crazy. He reached out and grabbed Jack's wrist. "Please stop that."  
  
"My fingers aren't the problem here." But Jack did stop with the tap, tap, tap though. Unfortunately he didn't stop with the nagging. "What is the problem, Daniel? I'd have thought that after talking to the President you'd be able to put all this behind you. Well, not right away, but to make a start, anyway. To at least understand what –"  
  
He did explode. Even without the tap, tap, tapping. "Oh, please, Jack! What? You think that hearing it from the President makes it all better? You think that just because the promo spot comes out of the mouth of your commander-in-chief, I'm going to be sold on the product? Well, I'm not. And I'm...I'm..." God. Gutted would be the word. Absolutely gutted that Jack might even conceivably be okay with all this.  
  
Daniel reached for the door handle and had the door partway open before Jack lunged across him and yanked it closed. He leaned against Daniel's left arm as he did so, and it took a few minutes before Daniel stopped cursing and straightened up from being hunched over. "Sorry," Jack quietly told him, and waited another few moments before admitting, "Daniel, really, I have no idea what you're going on about. Can we please talk, maybe back up a few weeks? I'm starting to think there's been some sort of miscommunication, or something."  
  
Even through his resentment, Daniel could see that Jack was truly adrift. He genuinely didn't understand what Daniel was referring to. A tiny flicker of hope fluttered in his chest. Maybe some miscommunication, Jack had just said, and yes, as much as Daniel didn't want to go over it all again, ever again, maybe they should. If there was the slightest chance that he'd spent the weeks since the fire labouring under some mistaken impression – or, if maybe Jack had – then it'd be foolish to carry on like that just because he was afraid to hear something that he might have no choice but to hear anyway.  
  
Maybe, in fact, it'd be a good idea to get one thing in particular he didn't want to hear out of the way, right away. Daniel took a deep breath, and steeled himself against the possibility that he'd been right about what Jack had to tell him today. "Jack, today, what you..." He wasn't sure how to ask, false-starting, and then just blurted it right out, speaking at top speed so the words wouldn't get stuck and choke him. "You wanted to see me today to tell me the transfer to Washington came in." He did it as a statement, because maybe it'd hurt less coming from himself rather than from Jack.  
  
Jack stared at him. "What?" Jack was doing the fish-gulpy thing. "Daniel, what the hell are you talking about?" Then Jack's face twisted, and he looked away and hit the steering wheel, hard. Daniel flinched as he hit it again and then turned to face Daniel, his eyes blazing. He enunciated excessively clearly as he said, "Daniel, tell me, please, just what did the President talk to you about? What did he tell you?"  
  
President Hayes had called Daniel in on the day he and Sam were supposed to start their return trip to Colorado. Jack had already gone back home, his plane leapfrogging Sam's car as she drove to Washington. Daniel had only just been released from the hospital, and while he hadn't been feeling very well still and much of the trip to the White House was mostly a blur, every word of what the President had told Daniel was solidly burned into long-term memory. He had no trouble telling Jack exactly what had been said: the reassurance that Ray Sinclair had told them about his wife being misled into thinking that Daniel somehow had the power to ascend her; that Daniel needn't worry about any repercussions or problems from all that unfortunate stuff, as the investigation had already been wrapped up in paperwork citing accidental death as its conclusion; that the only people they could legitimately press kidnap charges against were dead, but that didn't lessen the importance of what had happened to him, and Hayes sincerely regretted that he'd been put through all that.  
  
Jack's expression grew increasingly stormy, his face reddening alarmingly, as Daniel told Jack the rest of it. He recounted in brief the speech he'd been given about how important it was to world peace and the security of everyone on Earth to carefully manage the secret of the Stargate, and the glowing praise of all Daniel's accomplishments and recognition of his value as one of the very best the Earth had to offer.  
  
Daniel was starting to seriously worry about the possibility of a ruptured blood vessel, and wondered if he should even tell Jack about the rest of it, but he did because if there was a misunderstanding on his part he really wanted to know about it. So he told Jack about the manipulative acknowledgement that they knew, they knew, they knew that Daniel understood the importance of the Stargate to all humanity and would do whatever he could to ensure that nothing threatened the continued existence of the program.  
  
When Daniel finished, Jack's voice was deadly quiet as he asked, "So, by any chance was anything mentioned at all, even hinted at, about Sinclair's role in a specific strategic plan for setting up a new administration for Stargate Command? A plan which included controlled strategic release of information about the Stargate to the public? Tell me yes, Daniel. Say yes."  
  
Daniel stared at Jack, realising now that he'd been given only what Hayes had wanted him to hear, and he'd stupidly clung to all his earlier conclusions all these past weeks when maybe he shouldn't have. The answer to Jack's question to him was both yes and no, because it had been all too clear to Daniel right from the start that they'd planned to control what sort of information was released, and how and when, to the public – that's what they wanted him for, to be a front man for, after all. That had always been obvious, and he hadn't needed Hayes to spell that out for him.  
  
"No, no, he didn't," he whispered to Jack, because no, he hadn't been told about Sinclair being involved in that. And now that he knew, he wondered just what impact Peter's and Mavis' abduction of him might have had on those plans. God, he was so stupid. Jack had been trying to talk with him for weeks, and he'd rebuffed him at every turn, not wanting to discuss any of it with anyone. He'd stuffed himself firmly into the slot in the door labelled martyrdom and ignored any and all attempts to pull him by his heels back out of it.  
  
"Daniel, you have to talk to him when he gets here."  
  
"What? Who?" Daniel wasn't sure who Jack was talking about.  
  
Jack looked at him patiently. "Did you read the e-mail? You didn't, did you. Sinclair, Daniel. He's coming to the SGC this afternoon. He wrote asking if you'd see him. I think you should."  
  
No! No, he couldn't. He couldn't do that, because... because –  
  
Jack's hand was on his shoulder. "I know. Look, I understand, I do. I feel the same way myself, Daniel. But I think you need to do this. I think it's important for both of you."  
  
As Jack put the keys back into the ignition and started the truck, Daniel had to ask him for the bottom-line. He couldn't make any decisions about facing Sinclair until he knew what was going to happen. "Are they going to go ahead with it, Jack? Am I out of the SGC?"  
  
Jack pulled out of the parking lot, only just barely glancing at him before turning his full attention to looking for traffic. "Ask Sinclair that question, Daniel."  
  
Daniel mentally cursed Jack roundly, in every language he could think of. And then he made up a few new ones just for the purpose. The time he'd spent re-immersing himself in the study of linguistics was made good all the way to the SGC.  
  


* * *

   
  
  
His leg wouldn't stop bouncing. Daniel put his right hand down on his knee, under the table, but that didn't help quiet the nervous motion. His palm was clammy and he wiped it on his pants before bringing it back up to rub at his sore left shoulder. It met other fingers there, and he turned in surprise to see Jack standing beside his chair, looking down at him with concern.  
  
"You okay? You want me to stay?"  
  
No, that wasn't necessary. Daniel knew he was just being silly. He shook his head, and Jack didn't ask again. A noise from Jack's office stiffened his back, but when Jack tapped his shoulder and stepped back, Daniel got up anyway, despite his reluctance to go in there. He didn't have much choice; Jack had been right all along – Daniel had to talk to Sinclair, and not just to find out about his future with the SGC. Mavis' eyes as she struggled to try to cut him free tracked his every move and thought during his waking hours, and during sleep the red eyes of the fire burned them all, and Oma never came.  
  
Sinclair was sitting in the chair opposite Jack's desk, and he stood up as Daniel paused in the doorway. He looked over at Daniel and then quickly averted his eyes, gazing down at the mess of papers on the desktop, and Daniel was fine with that because he really didn't want to look the man in the eye every bit as much as Sinclair wanted to avoid his eyes. A slight push at his back from Jack propelled him a step into the office, and Jack shut the door behind him, trapping him in there.  
  
Sinclair didn't wait for any pleasantries to be exchanged – which was good because Daniel had no intention of offering any. "My wife was a bitter woman, Dr. Jackson, and I made her that way." He looked up then, and shrugged, letting out a caustic self-deprecatory bark of something that could never be called laughter, but wasn't a sob either. "For the last eight years, I had my finger on the pulse of this entire nation, and yet I had no idea what was happening with my own wife. I thought she was happy. Mavis loved me..." he faltered, and then pushed on. "She loved me enough that she put everything she cared about aside. She did it for me, and it destroyed what made her who she was."  
  
Daniel silently listened, completely unwilling to be a participant in the man's grieving process. Sinclair could try to cope with whatever had gone wrong between himself and his wife on his own time; that was none of Daniel's business. He knew he sounded callous, and even though he didn't want to be that way he did it all the same, bluntly saying, "Yeah. Well. Why did you want to see me?"  
  
Sinclair looked taken aback and fumbled for an answer, hands fluttering ineffectually in front of him. "I wanted... I thought we should..." He paused, and his hands curled into loose fists as he apparently reconsidered how to explain himself. He was more composed for his second attempt. "I was hoping you'd let me re-introduce you to Mavis, Dr. Jackson. The person you saw there, the person who did that to you... that wasn't Mavis. That person was my wife."  
  
Daniel had to look away from Sinclair, feeling her eyes on him as she asked him why he got a choice but she didn't. Sinclair seemed to take that reaction as a rejection, because he tried harder. "Please. I realise it's me who owes you, not the other way around, but please... she was a good person."  
  
Eyes on him, no longer black and cold and dead, but alive with fear and regret. Eyes that apologised even as they burned with resentment. Yes, he knew that already; he knew she had been a good person. Sinclair had tried to turn his wife into something she could never be without destroying a vital part of who she really was. It wasn't her fault. Tok'ra don't dance, Daniel remembered himself thinking before. It wasn't in their nature.  
  
"I also wanted to tell you why I left you in there," Sinclair added, straight out, and the feelings of betrayal and horror Daniel had been pushing aside for weeks broke through.  
  
"I don't want to hear it." Daniel pushed himself away from the door at his back, and quickly turned to face it. To open it, to leave. Smoke and fire were all around him and he hesitated, waited with the knife in his hand, with it pushed up against his wrist, hoping he wouldn't have to find the means within himself to slice his own arm open. Hesitating, waiting, more afraid of this death than he'd ever been of any of the ones that had come before, trusting that Sinclair was going to come back and help him.  
  
Teal'c. It was Teal'c who got him out, and Daniel couldn't stand to be in Sinclair's presence for one more second. He turned the knob, but Sinclair's hand suddenly appeared next to Daniel, flat against the door, preventing him from opening it. The already partially severed restraint snapped, the full weight of the betrayal of trust too great a burden to contain, and Daniel lashed out at Sinclair's arm with his right hand, landing a solid enough blow that Sinclair dropped his hand from the door.  
  
Daniel spun around, anger driving his hand up to push a finger hard against Sinclair's chest. "Don't," he warned him. "I'll leave if I like. Don't think you can make decisions for me."  
  
Sinclair met his eyes for the first time. "No? Are you sure about that?" Daniel just stared at him, not quite certain if that was a non sequitur or if he had missed something. Sinclair challenged Daniel as he stood there trying to decide what the point was. "You seem to have let other people make your decisions for you up to this point. Jack O'Neill tells me you've been sitting around all these weeks just waiting for someone to tell you what to do. So why should I believe you'd stop now?"  
  
Ah. Point made. "Right. So tell me then, what am I going to do?" Daniel asked him.  
  
Sinclair pushed Daniel's finger off his chest. "You tell me. If I said nothing has changed, that the initiative goes ahead as planned, then what are you going to do?"  
  
Whatever he had to, Daniel thought, whatever the hell that was. He could choose to do what they wanted, or to lose everything, and he really wasn't sure at this point which was preferable. So he didn't answer. Sinclair took his silence as opportunity to back up a few paces, both literally and metaphorically. He moved over to stand next to the desk, giving Daniel some space, and then started to talk. Daniel didn't want to hear it, but the soft, introspective tone and the haunted look on Sinclair's face were compelling deterrents to an interruption.  
  
"I took her outside. She couldn't breathe, and she collapsed. You were in there still tied to that thing, and she was out there with me, and she was panicking. I didn't know what to do. I remember looking for my phone to call for help, but it was in the pocket of my jacket." A ghost of a smile drifted on and then off his face. "Of course, Peter was wearing my jacket at the time."  
  
He idly fingered a package that sat on the desk. "I had every intention of going back in there for you. I carried her away from the building and put her down, and started to leave her there, but she grabbed my shirt. She was coughing up all this... stuff. Awful stuff." Then he looked up, and Daniel saw he was silently crying, tears overflowing and trickling down his face.  
  
"She managed to say something to me just before she... just before her mind shut down. She asked me..." He looked right at Daniel, explaining what had happened, and as much as Daniel wanted to reject the decision Sinclair had made, he couldn't. "She asked me if I was certain. If I was absolutely certain. I couldn't answer that, Daniel, not because she really wasn't there anymore to hear it, but because all of a sudden I wasn't sure, and she was dying. I didn't want her to die alone, and I didn't know what to do."  
  
Daniel didn't like it, but he understood it. "You knew I had the knife. I had a good chance of being able to use it."  
  
"Yes." Sinclair looked at him gratefully. "You had the knife, but... god, this is going to sound demented. I guess it is demented, though. You had the knife, but suddenly I wasn't even really sure you needed it."  
  
Daniel groaned. Sinclair heard it, and admitted with difficulty, "Yes. Something shorted out on me, I guess. I sat out there with her, staring at that damned fire... just sat there with her and... and I think I really honestly expected you to come floating out of there as a... like a..."  
  
"A glowy white ball of energy," Daniel supplied for him, and Sinclair nodded. Daniel shifted in place, not quite knowing what to say.  
  
Sinclair seemed to think enough had been said about that, and Daniel had to agree. He understood how that had happened; Sinclair's wife had been dying in his arms, and Daniel had recognised the love he had for her right from the very first moment he'd seen them together. He'd seen how desperately Sinclair had wanted her to live, and he understood. A little bit of temporary insanity wasn't difficult to imagine under the circumstances. He didn't know if he would ever be able to offer any forgiveness, but Sinclair didn't seem to want that anyway.  
  
Picking up the package that was sitting on Jack's desk, Sinclair came over to the doorway. "You won't be taken out of the SGC against your will. The President has asked me not to withdraw my future participation in helping to secure the future of the Stargate project, and my agreement is conditional on that. He needs me in the political and public eye more than he needs you there." He snorted cynically, and then shoved the package into Daniel's hand. "Besides, I think he was never really convinced that was the best place for you anyway. That was my idea right from the start, not his. This is for you. I hope you'll take a look at it, but if you decide not to, I'll understand."  
  
He shouldered his way past Daniel and opened the door, obviously intent on leaving it at that. Daniel stepped into his way. "Why? Why are you doing this for me now? If you thought I'd be more useful to the program as –"  
  
"I never thought that," Sinclair interrupted him. "I never thought of you at all. I used the qualities you've demonstrated as an argument for making a new place for myself. You had it right all along; you were just a means to my ends." He gently placed his hands on Daniel's shoulders and moved him aside from in front of the door. "That's why I'm doing this now; because I never even thought about you at all. Just like I never really thought about Mavis."  
  
He left Daniel standing there with the package in his hand. It was a heavy-weight brown manila envelope, folded over and taped. Curious despite his reluctance to deal with any of this any further today, Daniel held it against his chest with his left arm, the brace pressing it securely against him, and unfolded it, peeling back the tape. There was a digital videotape inside and another, smaller, envelope.  
  
He waited long enough in Jack's office to help lessen the chances of running into Sinclair in the briefing room or the corridor if the man was still here somewhere, and then took the back corridor to the stairs, foregoing the elevator. The climb would do him good, and if he ran across anyone, maybe they'd think the catch in his breathing was due to the exercise.  
  
It had taken some courage for Sinclair to come here and say the things he'd said. Daniel understood he'd done it for both their sakes, to get the monkey off both their backs. Some wounds never treated tended to fester, and this was one of them. Having the reason for Sinclair leaving him in that burning building did help bring Daniel to a point where he could deal with that. And certainly, being told just what was behind the tainting of his friend's efforts to honour him certainly helped in accepting that there was an apple around that worm. It had been offered out of love and respect, and it was about time Daniel recognised that the apple was far more important than the worm.  
  
When he got to his office, he placed the tape into his camera, and plugged it into the computer. As the software loaded, he opened the smaller envelope and found two letters and yet another envelope. One of the letters proved to be a copy of a contract, actually, between Sinclair and the DVSS that detailed the terms of the establishment of a special award of merit. It was to be funded by Sinclair and presented annually by the DVSS to those who sacrificed of themselves for the benefit of others. The other letter was acknowledgement of a substantial donation to enable the DVSS to fund recreational centres and dance programs in underprivileged neighbourhoods.  
  
Sinclair had said he wanted to re-introduce Daniel to Mavis. Daniel handled the envelope, feeling something heavier than paper inside, and wondered how Sinclair thought giving him this stuff went anywhere toward doing that. But he opened it, because he'd already started and he may as well finish, and found inside a print of a graphic image. He felt an imprint on the back, and turned it over to find a label there that designated the image as being for the creation of an award medal.  
  
An outer bronze-coloured circle contained a flowing sweep of silver and gold lines, and it only took him a second to recognise it as a stylised drawing of a human body, the torso twisted at the waist, the arms raised above the head. One leg supported the body while the other was raised and bent back at the knee. It was beautifully done.  
  
A message box on his computer screen said the software was more than happy to do its stuff for him, and he activated the button to start the tape. The images first shown were black and white lines flashing across a mottled grey screen, followed by a countdown, and Daniel realised this was a digitised version of an old home movie. Tinkly, warped music came out of the speakers, and a gravelly voice announced it was time for the show to begin.  
  
Daniel sat and watched as a group of children ran across a small grassy area, playing happily, pushing and shoving and shouting at each other in voices made intermittently broken and squeaky by the poor quality of the old film. He put his hand to his mouth as the camera zoomed in on one particular child, a young girl of about six or seven years of age. The tinkly music which had barely been audible in the background behind the shouts and laughter of the children was abruptly louder, no doubt its source held closer the camera.  
  
Daniel swallowed and blinked hard, to no good effect, as Mavis stared at him through the camera, her eyes alive with sassy, eager anticipation. She curtsied exaggeratedly, and then abruptly stuck her tongue out at the camera and whirled away. And she started to dance. Leaping and twirling, her arms and legs free as birds swooping through the air, she laughed and danced, with open enthusiasm and a grace born of unselfconscious delight.  
  
She came to rest twisted at the waist, one leg supporting her with the other raised and bent at the knee. Her face glowed with pride and joy as she raised her arms above her head, and Daniel said hello to her, and goodbye, and allowed himself to cry for the loss of her innocence.  


 

* * *

  
  
Don’t let some hell bent heart leave you bitter,  
When you come close to selling out reconsider.  
Give the heavens above more than just a passing glance,  
And when you get the choice to sit it out or dance...  
  
I hope you dance. I hope you dance.  
  
Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"  
  


 

 


End file.
